Old Enemies
by Meagan Snow
Summary: Everybody knows that Poland and Lithuania used to be best friends. Everybody also knows that they had a fight some few hundred years ago. And everybody knows what about. But when Toris, Eduard, Katyusha, and Natalya are kidnapped, who else can a terrified Latvia turn to for help? And what can Feliks do? Horrible summary, please read :) T for slight Polish language
1. Preface

**And here we are with a brand new fic! I hope that y'all like it. It'll definitely be better than my previous attempts at Hetalia, I promise.  
I know the first part isn't all that great, but it gets better, I promise :)**

**NOTE: Polish words in **_italics_**, explanations in bold.**

**EDIT: As of 6/26/13, this fic has been subject to a sweeping rewrite. Check it out to see what's changed!**

* * *

You know what? In retrospect, I've been blind and selfish. Bit of an idiot, too.  
Although I'd never, like, admit that to anyone.

You're all probably wondering what I'm, like, talking about, aren't you?  
I'm talking about annexing _Wilno_- I mean, Vilnius. Jesus, I'm tired.

Okay, so maybe I didn't really, like, think it through. Perhaps I thought that the Lithuanians there were mistreating my people. Maybe I'd gotten a little greedy, or been given some, like, really bad advice.  
But most of all, I never really stopped to look at it from Liet's point of view. I thought he was totally overreacting. I mean, like, okay, perhaps his best friend had just invaded him, but that had been years ago- and besides. That's what nations _DO!_

But that's, like, totally off subject. What I'm trying to say here is that I hadn't imagined how I'd have felt if Liet had suddenly turned on me and taken over my beautiful _Warszawa_- Warsaw, and what's more, refused to return it, knowing that he overpowered me, like,_ dziesięć do jednego_. Ten to one.  
But he didn't- I did. And if I'd have stopped to look at it like that for just a second before now, I'd have seen that. God, I just don't know how… 

We were at odds for a long time afterwards. Like a hundred years, more or less. I lost count. For a nation, I suppose that isn't, like, all that long, but imagine a lot of furious tension between you and your best friend, and multiply that by the fact that you had just taken a beloved possession of theirs, then add that to the fact that you had brutally beaten him up when he tried to take it back, and you get, like, about one tenth of what was going on between us.

And finally, some years ago, at an international conference, I'd proposed peace to him. You know, like a _"what's past is past, let's be allies again_" sort of deal? Like that, yeah. And looking back, I finally understand all the changing emotions that flashed across his face at the moment when I asked him to sign it.  
Anger, confusion, hurt, sadness, and betrayal all flew by in, like, a split second. I hadn't really paid attention to anyone but myself when that was happening, so I didn't really notice them. _Idiota_. How could I have even suggested it? I must have been, like, _blind_ or something.

I guess I wasn't, like, really surprised that we didn't go back to more than a political neutrality (like, "I don't try to take you over again, you don't attack me"). I was convinced he was overreacting. When as a matter of fact, he had every right to hate me for the rest of his life.  
But I, playing the fool as usual, decided to give him some time. To, like, think over it, y'know? And then we'd be back to normal again.  
Little did I know that that would be the last time I saw him.

I mean, we'd sort of kept in touch (like, telephones and all), but not really. It was really only official business. And only if we _had_ to.  
All the greater was my surprise when at yesterday's meeting, everyone was asking me about where he was and everything. I mean, he wasn't there. I assumed he was sick or something, or something had cropped up with the former USSR because, like, none of them showed (except me).

I had shrugged it off then, you know? Isn't really any of my business what Russia and the others did anymore. It's not like he can hurt anyone any longer. Those days are long gone.

But tonight, I'd called Liet to ask if everything was cool. Nobody answered, not even when I called the other Baltics. I even, like, tried Ukraine… I haven't heard from Kasia in ages, either… but nothing. No reply.  
So I started to think, and I realized why he was, like, avoiding me. Jesus! I can't believe how I could have blinded myself to him for so long. 

It's, like, around two in the morning now. I can't be sure because the last time America came over, he adjusted all the clocks in my house to US time and I'm, like, too tired to add seven every time I try to read the time. And he even somehow managed to change it to a 12-hour display!  
He even got into my cell phone somehow!  
…I bet the _idiota_ did it on purpose, just to tick me off.  
_*Note to self- get Netherlands to fix them for me next time I see him._

But I think it's, like, four-ish, and I can't sleep because my mind won't stop mulling everything over.  
_Jezus, Maria,_ I was an idiot not to see what I was doing to Liet. I left him a message telling him to call me, but I really don't expect anything.  
So I thought I'd, like, get this out of me. And here it is: I WAS WRONG. I admit it, okay? I. Was. Wrong. I hurt Liet and I'm sorry for it. But what can I do now…? _Cholera_

* * *

Poland closed his notebook and rubbed his eyes tiredly. He doubted whether anything he just wrote made any sense, or even if it was in English or Polish, but he just wanted to get everything off his chest. He had never really had anyone to confide in, and especially not since he had alienated Liet. And writing it out in a journal was supposed to help, but in reality, it only made him feel more alone.  
The large, lazy flakes of January snow calmly floating to the ground outside his bedroom window weren't helping his mood in the slightest. In his mind, they seemed to be mocking him in their silent, slow way. At least they were in good company.  
He had to be tired if even the _snow_ was mocking him.

Out of instinct, not hope, he checked his cell phone for any calls or messages.  
_Nic_. Nada. Nothing. Not even a blip. What nation in their right mind was up at this hour?  
Probably America. All his clocks read 8:00 PM.  
_20:00,_ he mentally translated. _Add seven- no, that's 27._

What crossed his mind next could only be proof of his sleep deprivation.  
_27? There's not even, like, that many hours in a day. I've gotta be doing this wrong. I'll call America when the sun comes up._  
The fact that it would be 1:00 AM on the changed clocks when it did could only be considered a fitting revenge. One that would normally have given him a fair amount of satisfaction, but now, he couldn't bring himself to care.

Resigned, the Pole fell back onto his bed crosswise and hid his head under his pillow, muffling a groan.  
_"Ała…"_ he mumbled, picking up the notebook and tossing it to the floor before repeating the maneuver, this time managing to remain in this position for all of thirty seconds.

He was this time disturbed by a sharp ringing noise.  
_"Co, do…"_ **("What in the name of…")**

Assuming that it was his alarm, he dragged himself out of bed once more to press the snooze button, muttering curses worthy of Romano in America's general direction. He hit it twice before realizing that it was the doorbell. It was now joined by a desperate knocking.  
_Who, at this hour…? I mean, besides me…_

_"Idę, już, idę!"_ **("I'm coming, already! I'm coming!")** He shouted ahead in his native language, walking down the stairs at the very fastest pace he could manage without tripping and demolishing half the place.

When he finally made his way to the entrance, he found himself face-to-face with nobody else but a terrified boy- whom he didn't know personally but recognized as Latvia- who burst into tears as soon as he opened the door.


	2. Chapter 1

**Here we are again :3 With one of five chapters!**

* * *

Poland's sleep-deprived mind took a second to process everything that was going on.  
It was three in the morning, he had just realized he'd alienated his best friend, and now, said best friend's almost-adoptive-brother was sobbing on his doorstep.

Some instinct seemed to kick in as his mind mulled over the facts.  
"Hey." He knelt down to the boy's level. "Latvia. It's Latvia, right?"

The boy nodded, giving him a terrified glance, still shaken by uncontrolled sobs. Despite this, however, he stood practically at attention, arms at his sides.

"Ssh… no… it's okay. It's okay. I, like, got you now. You're fine." He tried to put a hand around the child's shoulder, but the latter shrunk back as if he was about to slap him.  
Of course. The kid had grown up as a part of Russia's household. He himself had known Russia from an early age as well, and knew very well that even the kindest-looking smile could hide stinging consequences. It was enough to break almost anyone.  
Poland bit his lip, trying to think of something to do. If anyone was insane enough to be up at this hour, they would see what seemed to be him terrorizing an unknown youth.

Eventually, he settled for gently leading him inside by placing a hand on his back and shutting the door, locking it _"na cztery spusty"_ **(Untranslatable, colloquial- means to lock the door using an excessive or unnecessary amount of locks either to give the appearance of safety- as here- or as a symptom of paranoia.)**

He waited patiently while the sobs faded to hiccups, tears still flowing down the shorter boy's face. "Hey, you're okay now. You're safe." Poland repeated.

The boy shook his head mutely, looking at him, round, scared eyes peeking out from beneath a fringe of messy bangs.  
Poland realized how intimidating he must have seemed, especially to a person who had grown up with every ounce of self-confidence crushed out of him. With every passing second, he was more and more at a loss about what to do.

"You, like, probably know who I am, don't you?" He tried a different card, trying to get an answer from the frightened country in front of him.

A nod. Poland assumed he would, otherwise he wouldn't have shown up, looking as if he needed help but was afraid to ask.

"… All right, but you can call me Feliks, okay? That's my real name." Poland stuck his hand out toward the other person in the room.  
"What's your name?"

"Ra-Ravis. Ravis Galante, sir." The boy whispered shyly, shaking the hand. Poland was surprised by how cold the small palm was.

"_Jezus, Maria_, it's, like, January! And you're not wearing a coat!"  
A shout tore itself out of his mouth as he quickly grabbed the boy's sweatshirt off of him and hung it on the nearest heater, taking his own off and pulling it over his head while the latter cowered under his touch. If for just a second, Liet and Vilnius were pushed from his mind as he tried not to panic.  
"Here- I know it might be, like, a little too big for you, but it's warm. I'll get you a blanket, okay?"

"N-no, that's-that's okay." Latvia stammered- albeit shaking from the cold, still giving him an anxious stare. "Th-thank you."

Feliks looked at him, shocked, and insisted on draping a thick, red-and-white folk-patterned blanket around the shivering child while mentally beating himself up for not having noticed earlier.  
He definitely wasn't used to being around children, but that was no excuse for overlooking the weather outside. Running around wearing autumn clothes in January couldn't do anyone any favors.

"There. Hmm… can you, like, wait here for a second? Sit down on the couch or something."  
He ran upstairs to his room and tried to find something dry that wouldn't look like it belonged to a grizzly bear on Ravis' tiny frame.  
He eventually settled on a pair of old lounge pants that could be drawn together with strings and the smallest socks he had. They were pink and fuzzy, a well-meant Christmas gift from China, who himself had feet probably half of Poland's size.  
He ran back to the hall to find Ravis still standing where he had left him stiffly. He didn't appear to have moved a muscle.

He thrust the clothes into the boy's hands, bidding him change into them.  
"Here- I'll, like, turn around. Hang your wet clothes on the heater when you finish."  
After a reasonable time, he turned around and nodded, satisfied that the boy wouldn't catch hypothermia.

"Great! Would you like some…" he bit his tongue as he was about to say _"coffee."_  
"…Cocoa? Tea?"  
He tried his best to sound upbeat and relaxed. In his mind, that was supposed to help the

Ravis nodded obediently. Feliks mentally slapped himself: of course he wouldn't refuse if he offered tea. He couldn't. That was also one of the things he had had to get used to around Russia. You just _didn't_ refuse tea.  
He himself had made a point of asking for coffee, even though he personally hated the stuff.

"Sugar? Lemon? Milk? Something?" The older man asked, pulling the items out as he said them.

"C-can I have sugar?" The Latvian blurted, then clamped a hand over his mouth.

"Sure, totally! No problem." Poland smiled in his direction encouragingly, then balanced the cups and saucers in a way that England would envy if he could see.

As he placed the things on the kitchen table, he gestured for Ravis to sit down and grinned inwardly when he saw that the kid was beginning to relax, wrapped up in the blanket over clothes that hung from his tiny frame so loosely that it looked comical- though he was still shooting pensive glances in his direction.  
A ridiculous thought suddenly struck him. _And people tell me I'm petite. __It was the first remotely funny thing that had come to his mind since… forever._

"How many lumps? Two?" He asked, further trying to relieve the tension.  
Latvia again nodded obediently, gripping the cup in both chilled hands and taking a cautious sip.

He observed the boy in silence for a while. He still seemed to be thoroughly intimidated by Feliks, and must have had a serious reason to come to him after what he'd done to Liet.  
He wondered if Ravis had heard of him as a back-stabbing false friend. Most likely so.

He seriously hated bringing this up, especially since the kid had just stopped being totally terrified of him and actually begun to look (slightly) calmer (though his eyes still darted toward him nervously every few seconds), but whatever it was had to be important.

"Hey… Ravis?" He tried to imitate the soft-spoken tone he had heard Liet use so many times.  
"Sorry to bring this up like this, but how come you're here? Is everything, like, okay and everything?"  
He posed the question as softly as he could, but Latvia instantly broke back down into tears.

"C'mon, now… You have to tell me." Feliks said in as gentle a tone as he could muster while remaining insistent.

"It's-it's Toris. And- and Eduard. And even Natalya and Katyusha. They're…" He broke down into uncontrollable sobs. "W-we n-ne-e-ed he-lp!" He choked out between gasps for air.

Poland shifted seats to put an arm around the Latvian and pull him to himself, rocking gently while he released all the pent-up emotion. He still had no idea what he was doing, but it seemed to be helping some.  
He didn't recognize all the names (he and most of Eastern Europe were on country terms), but he had the good sense not to ask again until the youth had calmed down some, though he still rested his head against his shoulder trustfully. Poland briefly wondered what his previous life had been like if he was this obviously starved of affection, but he didn't allow himself to get distracted. If something had happened to Liet and the others…  
"Can you tell me what happened? I can do my best to help you out, but I need to know what's going on."

"I don't know." He whispered quietly, and Poland could feel him shaking in fear at the mere memory. "Someone attacked us at night. I mean, they had guns and they knocked down the door, and-and everything!" He stopped talking for a second and squeezed his eyes tightly. Poland rubbed his arm comfortingly.

"Trust me. I know what that's like," he said sympathetically, and Latvia sniffled. It was true. He was one of the few people who could say that without exaggerating.

"Eduard said you would. He… he distracted everyone so I could run out the window. And now… Now… They're all go-_o-one!"_  
Tears started flowing from his eyes again and Feliks tried to place himself in the boy's shoes, but it simply escaped his imagination- despite the fact that he had lost count of all the times he had been invaded (several times at inhuman times of the morning).

"I heard a- a gunshot when I ran… I think… I think it wasn't a warning shot. It was because I got- I got away." The flood of words that came from his mouth still hitched because he was crying, but at the very least he was talking.

"Do you-" Poland started but decided to let him talk. In some odd way, the kid realized what he was going to ask.

"I don't know who it was. They were wearing black and I didn't see faces. I think- I think they were men, some of them, older than us. I'm _sorry_." He apologized meekly, looking back up.  
He seemed to have suddenly retreated back into his shell, jerking out of Feliks' grasp and sitting up stock-straight like he had before as he stammered a string of apologies.  
"I _tried_, I really did, but it was so dark, and I just…"

"Why are you sorry?" Poland was once again shocked by the extent of the lack of self-regard that he had noticed a bit of in Liet. If he had thought that his former best friend had been bad about it, this child was a thousand times worse. It just didn't seem _right_.  
"I didn't expect you to notice like anything at all. If I were in your place, I'd probably not notice half of what you did. "  
He didn't add what he thought at the next moment_: I'd have probably stood in front of my friends and most likely have been shot first because I'm, like, stupidly stubborn like that._

Latvia shook his head, inconsolable.  
"I… was supposed to… g-go and get help! Eduard told me to make it here and I'd be safe. But I made it too slo-owly. And n-now they've probably been taken away! All because of me! It's all my fault!"

"I don't think you could have done any better. They would have been taken away anyway, and you not only managed to avoid them and get out, you managed to warn me of what happened."  
Poland wiped the younger boy's tears away with his hand, forgetting his usual affected speech pattern in favor of a serious tone. "Look at me."

Latvia looked up nervously, flinching as if expecting to be hit. His violet eyes shone with fear and barely contained tears but also stifled curiosity.

"I promise you, I will find them. And I promise you that you are safe as long as you're with me."  
For a second, he didn't see the expectant face of Ravis, but that of a much younger Toris. His own words echoed in his mind, spoken by a child Feliks.  
_"You're safe as long as you're with me, yeah? So stop crying."_

"…Because everything will be all right." He finished, not meeting Latvia's eyes.

The last time that that promise had been spoken, he had broken it because of bad judgment and sheer idiocy. He was determined not to break this one.

"For-for real?" The disbelief in Latvia's voice tugged at his heart.

"For real." Poland gave him the warmest smile he could manage.  
"Come on, we have to go to bed. It's been a long night for both of us."

* * *

**=_=" Brilliant, all three of you. Let the kid go parading in 20cm of snow without a coat on?  
And genius, Feliks, for thinking of it immediately...  
My characters are ****_idiots!_**** But then again... that might just be me...**

**But review for cutesy LatPol moments? (Not a ship! Got more coming your way!)**


	3. Chapter 2

**The song is "Mały Książe" (The Little Prince) by Kasia Sobczyk. Google "Kasia Sobczyk Mały Książe and the first thing there.**

******My parents actually used to sing it to me as a lullaby… hence I wanted to incorporate it into Feliks' personality a little. NOTE: I'm SO not making him an Author's Avatar. Trust me, that's the only personal bit I'm throwing in for now.**

* * *

"…Come on, we have to go to bed. It's been a long night for both of us."

"Night?" Ravis protested timidly. "It's almost morning, isn't it?"

"It isn't morning if we, like, didn't sleep at night." Poland replied with a smile and a playful wink, all the while leading them upstairs. He hoped that his light tone and cheerful demeanor could take the emphasis off of what had just happened.  
He then realized that he had never seen Latvia smile. Of course, they had only briefly seen each other at a few meetings, but he had always been looking depressed, anxious, but most of all, scared.  
He continued:  
"Besides… look at the clocks. It's like 21:30. Way past both of our bedtimes, isn't it?"  
Okay, so he would normally still be watching a movie on _TVPuls_, had it been 9:30 PM. But that was a harmless lie.

Latvia stifled a giggle as he looked at the clock in the room. Indeed, it read: 9:30.  
"Why are your clocks set all wrong?" He asked finally, looking surprised at his own bravery.

"Because a certain nation we all know whose name starts with _'A'_ and ends with _'merica'_ decided that it would, like, help him feel more at home when he abused my hospitality now and again."

"Why don't you fix it?" He asked again, looking unsure if he was crossing the thin red line by asking another question but ever so slightly emboldened by Feliks' casual attitude.

"Hmm… Too lazy, too busy, have no idea how to program an alarm clock. Take your pick."

Almost unconsciously, Ravis had picked up the device and begun to tamper with it. Feliks noticed but pretended not to interfere, assuming that it couldn't get more wrecked than it was already, and at least it took the boy's mind off of what had happened.

He sat in silence for a while, watching him press the assorted buttons quickly and skillfully.  
Almost as if… he knew what he was doing.

"There." The shorter of the two blondes said suddenly, placing it back on the night table. There was a barely suppressed note of satisfaction in his voice.  
The clock read 4:38.

"How did you-!" Poland shouted, stating at him in shock. He knew that he was overreacting, but he might as well play it up for the cause. Latvia flinched, as if he was expecting him to lash out, and opened his mouth to stammer an apology.  
_Wow. Nice going, genius…_

"I've been trying to figure that out for, like, a week!" He continued to feign shock, albeit a little more gently. "You've gotta be a genius or something!"

Latvia looked very confused but swelled with happiness, unused to bring praised like that.  
"_He_ used an alarm clock that was sort of like that one. It was my job to program it to make it work right."  
He leaned in closer and whispered, eyes shining conspiratorially: "Once, I set it to go off two hours early. On purpose."  
He once again unexpectedly stopped and placed a hand over his mouth, cutting himself off and retreating back into his _rigidly at attention _shell.

"Why do you do that?" Poland asked suddenly. "Like, cut yourself off like that."

"I talk too much. I'm sorry." He confessed. "I try not to."

"No, no! That's okay. Keep talking, I'd like to hear how that one ended."

"I got in big trouble after that trick. I never did it again." He finished, beginning to shake all over. He wasn't willing to say the extent of his punishment and somehow, Poland wasn't all too keen to know.

"Well, it came in handy now, didn't it?" The older rushed to change the subject. "You don't, like, by any chance, know how to change the time on a cell phone, do you?"

"I could try." Ravis offered earnestly. "I've never tried."

"All right… but can we, like, do it tomorrow? You just proved it was almost five in the morning. High time to go to bed, isn't it?" Feliks once again forced a light and cheery note into his voice.

Ravis didn't answer, but Poland could notice that he looked rather drowsy.

And then it hit him. His house was adjusted to one inhabitant.  
Translation: one bed.  
_"Szlag"_ he murmured under his breath in Polish, running a hand through his blonde hair aggravatedly, then looked around to see if Ravis had heard.  
He hadn't. Good. He didn't think it was a curse word, exactly, but perhaps it would be better if he controlled his language while around the kid.

"Hey… hmm. What do- no…" he started. He was about to suggest that Ravis would sleep on the couch downstairs, where he had unceremoniously dumped America when the latter had stayed over, but it didn't seem quite right to do so.

"Would you sleep in my bed, and I could go downstairs on the couch?"

Ravis shook his head violently. "No! Please don't! I can't…" he shrieked, then froze and added:  
"I couldn't make you get out of your bed, Mr. Poland, sir."

Poland gave him a discerning look. He had paled and was picking at the edge of the blanket (which he still wore like a Mexican poncho) nervously, and his normally wide eyes had become almost perfect circles. Even an idiot could see that this wasn't the case.  
"You're, like, afraid of the dark, aren't you?" He exclaimed as it finally hit him.

"Y-yes, sir." Ravis nodded timidly, not taking his eyes off of the floor, his hands unconsciously twisting the fringe of the blanket into a rope.

Feliks ran a hand through his hand uncomfortably, trying to figure out what other options he had left…

"I'm sorry!" Ravis continued quickly. "Please don't be mad, I didn't mean to, I'll go if you want me to! I'll even sleep in the closet if…"

_Poland sighed, forcing himself not to shout at the boy to __stop apologizing, for the love of God!__ Instead, he knelt down to Latvia's level, causing him to cease talking abruptly and stare at him, chest rising and falling raggedly in terror.  
"Hey. It's all cool, okay?" He started, not really sure where his monologue was going. "I promise I won't make you sleep in the closet or anything unless you want to. _How about… how about we both get into my bed?" He knew that he, Liet, and Estonia had shared a bed and decided that this option might help the boy feel safer.

Ravis nodded vehemently.  
"Th-thank you!" He bowed slightly, but a small, grateful smile now graced his lips.

"Right." Feliks returned the smile, feeling both glad and relieved that he hadn't only made things a billion times worse.  
"So here's, like, your pillow, and… Hmm, I think all my other clothes are much too large for you, and yours are still, like, sopping wet, so you'll have to sleep in what you've got, okay?"

"Okay." Ravis echoed, clambering into the bed and under the covers, looking up to Feliks expectantly and somewhat disbelievingly. Poland finally slid in beside him and turned off the night lamp.

"Goodnight." He managed belatedly, but the only reply was soft breathing that signaled the boy was already asleep.

Feliks closed his eyes and let a wave of exhaustion wash over him as well, slowly making everything fade into the velvety black of dreamless sleep.  
Sleep without dreams that would keep him awake. Without thoughts, doubts, or regrets. Without hope and without disappointment. Just a dark, heavy curtain that allowed him, if just for a second, to distance himself from the real world.

It didn't last long, however. He was soon woken, but when he opened his eyes, he couldn't immediately place why. Had he imagined it, or had Latvia cried out?

"Mmh… _Śpij!"_ ("Sleep!") Feliks muttered indistinctly, still partially asleep, turning from his stomach over onto his side. He closed his eyes and tried to tune out again, but was already wide awake by that time (or at least as close as he could get on two hours of sleep).

He suddenly registered that there was a soft crying coming from behind his back. He slowly flipped around, careful not to disturb the boy. Once his eyes got used to the darkness again, he saw that Ravis had his face buried in his pillow, curled up into a tiny ball. When he held his breath and leaned in nearer, he noticed that there were tremors wracking his entire body.

"Hey… all right?" He whispered finally, placing a tentative hand on the child's shoulder. He was shocked to realize that it was far too hot to be healthy. He moved his hand to Ravis' forehead on an impulse. He was practically burning up.

The touch made Ravis jump and almost fall off the bed with an incoherent shriek. "No! Please don't hurt me, I didn't want to… _Help me!_"

"_Szlag!_" Feliks whispered. Ravis was evidently delirious, shouting at things that weren't there. He cursed himself for being an idiot. What else could he have expected after wearing nothing more than a hoodie and jeans in thirty centimeters of snow? If not more than thirty.

Poland tried not to panic.  
_Pull yourself together, Feliks_, idioto!_You're not going to, like, help him by freaking out._His inner Germany seemed to shout at him. That helped, a little.

"Ravis…? Ravis, it's me! You're safe! Nobody is hurting you!"

"Stop! _Please!_ No more! I don't, I can't, don't…"

"_Ravis!_ It's _me!_ Feliks! _Wake up!_"

This was again only met with screaming, which devolved into sobbing. It made his heart twist in guilt; despite his best efforts, Latvia was seeing _him_ as his tormentor, after all. And he couldn't do anything to help.  
Finally, feeling more powerless than he had thought possible, he began to hum a song he had heard on the radio somewhere, many years ago. It was sweet and melancholic, but moved along at a decent pace as he began to remember the words.

_"Gdzie jesteś, Mały Książę, gdzie?__  
__Odszedłeś z mej książeczki kart._  
_W świecie, gdzie nikt nie kocha róż_  
_Na zawsze ktoś pozostał sam._

_"W świecie, gdzie nikt nie kocha róż__  
__Na zawsze ktoś pozostał sam."_

He continued to sing, singing the first verse when the last was through so that he wouldn't have to stop. Not if it was the only thing that he could do for Ravis. And it seemed to be working, too; Ravis had stopped cowering and eventually relaxed, gentle sobs still escaping his lips occasionally even after Feliks assumed he was asleep. But those eventually also ceased, and for the first time, it struck the Pole how tiny and helpless he was against Russia's tyranny. Like a leaf tossed by a sandstorm. He couldn't stop what was going on or even shout out for help, only pray for it to stop sooner or later. It broke his heart.

Even though he had already promised help to Latvia, he made a vow in his own heart. He would do everything it took to help the tiny Nation. No matter what the costs.

_"Gdzie jesteś, Mały Książę? Gdzie__  
__Odszedłeś z mej książeczki kart?_  
_Czy po pustyni błądzisz? Znów,_  
_Rozmawiasz z echem pośród skał?_

_"W maleńkiej Róży kochał się__  
__Książę na jednej z wielu gwiazd._  
_Nie widział przedtem innych róż,_  
_Kiedy w daleki poszedł świat._

_"Na Ziemi zwątpił w miłość swą,__  
__Tę najpiękniejszą z wszystkich snów,_  
_Bo jak miał w jednej kochać się,_  
_Gdy ujrzał park z tysiącem róż?_

_"Zrozumiał wtedy Książę to,__  
__Że tylko jedna w świecie jest,_  
_Ta, którą kochał w wszystkie dni_  
_I wrócił znów do Róży swej._

_"Gdzie jesteś, Mały Książę, gdzie?__  
__Odszedłeś z mej książeczki kart._  
_W świecie, gdzie nikt nie kocha róż_  
_Na zawsze ktoś pozostał sam._

_"W świecie, gdzie nikt nie kocha róż__  
__Na zawsze ktoś pozostał sam."_

* * *

**I love how this turned out rewritten; I never liked this chapter before. **


	4. Chapter 3

**This chapter is a little shorter than it used to be, but I like it better this way.**

* * *

Feliks didn't really know when he fell asleep, but realized he did when he came to, sprawled at the foot of his own bed. It took him a long time to collect his bearings.  
The sun was shining brightly through the curtains he had neglected to close.  
He quickly did so, shooting a glance at the alarm clock as he went. _11:02.__  
_How was it eleven already? He never slept until eleven. That was ridiculous.

Despite everything, he still felt tired and almost climbed right back into his bed- when suddenly he noticed that it was already occupied.

_"Kto…?"_ **("Who…?")** he almost shouted. The memories of the last night suddenly came flooding back to him.  
Latvia- no, Ravis, and Liet, the kidnapping- everything. Especially what had happened to Ravis. And what he had sworn to himself.

He held his breath, backing off silently. He knew from experience that Ravis probably got next to no sleep when under Russia's rule, so it couldn't have been often that he was allowed to sleep in. And the child looked like he very much needed it.  
It looked like he was getting up after all.

He gave the Latvian one last glance to ensure he was asleep before leaving the room on tiptoes, heading for the bathroom to change and brush his teeth.

When he had finished, he carefully poked his head back into the room, wary of the creaky door, and was met with a stare from a pair of round, purple-hued eyes.

"Hey. You're awake." He noticed. "How're you feeling?"

"Sick." A hoarse whisper reached him. After a short delay, he added:  
"…My throat hurts."

"…Let me, like, get you something for that, okay?" Feliks pulled his head back from the door, making his way down the thirteen steps to the kitchen cabinet.  
_Let's see…_

He pulled out box after box, reading the labels.  
_Ibuprom. Nurofen. Bayer. Flonidan. Flegamina. Cholinex._

"Not for use on children under 16. Not for use on children under 13. Not for use on minors. _Nie podawać dzieciom poniżej wieku 16 lat_. Do not give to children under the age of 14_. Szlag!"_

The only thing that he had that was safe for use on children was an unopened pack of antacid tablets that had expired two years ago. He quickly tossed that in the trash and decided to improvise.

_Ibuprofen_ was supposed to be anti-inflammatory, right? So a small enough dose should help.  
_Ibuprom Jr._ was just a diluted _Ibuprom_, he reasoned. No problem.  
He would have to run to the pharmacy later to check.

Aspirin… Could he give the kid a _Bayer_ tablet? It said to use one or two tablets on people over 13. So, by extension, one-half of a tablet on children over seven. Right?  
…Oh, who was he kidding? He had no idea about medicine.

He quickly pulled out his cell phone.  
_Who to call?_

Normally in a situation like this, he would call Liet for backup. But he couldn't do that, not now.  
He wondered briefly if Liet would ever forgive him for not starting the investigation right away. But his immediate priority was the sick child in his bedroom. Everything else came second.  
Even friends who had been kidnapped.  
_*Note to self- call someone. Do something._

His mind scrolled through the short list of people that he knew well enough to be comfortable with calling. Liet? NO! Italy? Definitely not. He was little more than a child himself. Germany? Never. He was just as deranged as, if not worse than, Russia. America? Nine hours of plane ride away. England?  
…Why not?

He dialed a familiar number.  
"Hey, Arthur. It's Feliks." He greeted quickly when the phone picked up. On the other side of the line, there could be heard what sounded like a court case, coupled with the sound of England excusing himself in a hushed tone.

"Good… hmm, morning, Feliks." Arthur greeted him politely, not allowing the surprise to show in his voice.  
"I'm sorry, but this isn't an especially good time. Is it urgent?"

"Yeah, sort of. Listen, I sort of need your help with something… Are you, like, in court?"

"Yes." Came the curt reply. "I am. Please continue."

Poland quickly summarized the situation to a polite silence at the other end of the line, punctuated with a loud rebuttal speech that drifted in from the next room.

"Well. That is rather unusual." England said finally, unruffled.  
"I suggest that you indeed do give him a small dose of Ibuprofen, but I strongly advise not applying the aspirin."

"Really? That's it?"

"You should also call someone in to stay with him when you go out and buy the necessary children's medicaments and begin your investigation." The case on the other side of the line had erupted into a shouting match. Something that sounded expensive and glass could be heard shattering nearby.  
"Now if you'll excuse me, I'm in the middle of a meeting, so if you don't mind…"

"Sure. No problem. Thanks."  
England had obviously thought he had ended the call, because Poland could hear him shout:  
"_OYE!_ This is the High Court, not some pub! _ORDER! ORDER IN THE COURT!_Francis, you git… _ORDER!"_  
The call dissolved into static.

Feliks snapped the phone shut (it was an old, folding model) and poured so-many milligrams of _Nurofen_ (which, as opposed to _Ibuprom_, was in a liquid state) into a measuring cup he had found, before heading back upstairs to give the medicine to Ravis.  
When he opened the door, he found that the kid had already drifted off into a half-asleep state, but he opened his eyes to look at him when he came in.

"Hey. Sorry it took me, like, this long. I couldn't find anything I could give to someone, like, your age."

"Thank you?" He was met with a confused reply as Ravis, who was obviously feeling somewhat better, tried to sit up. Probably not a lot of people had apologized to _him_, despite that he was almost constantly doing the same.  
Poland bent over to help him, resting his back against the wall at the head of his bed.

"…How old are you, exactly?" He was met with a sudden question that the boy blurted out, then quickly shut his mouth and seemed regretful.

"…How old do you think I am?" Feliks responded, feeling that nothing could surprise him now.

"I don't know. Toris says you're almost _two-thousand years old._ Is that true?"

The Pole looked at him, surprised.  
"Technically… yeah, yeah I am. But I usually count from, like, the _zmiana ustrojowa…_ the change in political systems." He finished finally, at a loss for a better translation.  
"On December 29, 1989. And physically, I represent that age. So long story short… I'm 23. For now."

The young Latvian nodded thoughtfully, mulling over what he had just heard.  
"Then… if I regained independence on September 21, 1991, shouldn't I be 21?"

"You could be, yeah." Poland agreed, equally pensive.  
"I think that all sort of depends on how old you were, like, before you were invaded, among other things. Plus… you have to remember that you're not just Latvia, you're also Ravis Galante, and I bet that, like, has a bit of weight in that matter as well. And you know what, like, the worst part of all of this is?"

"What?"

Feliks grinned. "Determining birthdays. I've always celebrated it on November 11, but now I'm not sure if I shouldn't, like, move it to December 29… and then, there are, like, a billion other dates that I could use. I used to celebrate it July 22, too…"  
He started to laugh, and Ravis joined in. They laughed for a long time, not because the fact itself was so funny but simply because they both needed something to laugh about.

"Anyway." Feliks finally jumped up suddenly from the spot he had taken on the side of the bed.  
"Long story short, I'm about twice your age physically, so it was hard to find something that was, like, safe to give you. Now… drink this quickly, and I'll get you a cup of water."

He handed the tiny measuring cup to the youth, who drank it obediently, making a horrible face at the contents but choking them down bravely.

"_Super_. I'll be right back again."  
Poland again left the room, this time to find a cup and fill it with water.

As he was rinsing out the aforementioned object, he was suddenly met with a shout from above.  
"Mr. Poland? I don't feel all too good."

He quickly filled the cup and practically leapt up the stairs, tripping on the last step and sprawling on the floor.  
_"Cholera."_ He half-swore, picking himself up and bursting through the door. On an impulse, he grabbed a basin from the bathroom as he ran.

Latvia had paled again and was looking much worse. His bangs had stuck together into sweaty strands. When Poland approached him, he noticed that he didn't look much better than he had the previous night.

He quickly recalled that the syrup wasn't meant to be taken dry, and held out the water.  
"Here- You'll feel better."  
No sooner had Ravis downed the entire cup, however, than he leaned over to the side of the bed and threw up.

Poland shouted a few unprintable words in shock and surprise, and Latvia immediately dissolved into hysterical tears, looking stricken.  
"I'm-so-so-so-o-rry." He sobbed. It was then that Feliks realized his mistake.

"No! No, you're okay. You couldn't help it. I should be sorry! I was mad at myself, not you."  
He helped him pull off the dirty clothes, trying not to show his disgust, and placed them in a heap with the sheets. He would get to those later.

He then grabbed Ravis' hand and led him, still crying, to the upstairs bathroom in his underwear.

"Here- You just gets into the shower and, like, wash up. Grab a towel from the rack and call me when you're done, yeah?"

"O-okay." Latvia nodded miserably.

Poland was still muttering curse words when he walked up to the pile of soiled sheets. He wrinkled his nose as he picked it all up, trying not to touch it and most of all, not to breathe it in.  
He deposited the objects into the washing machine and put it on the maximum setting.

He then walked back upstairs, making a mental note never to move into a house with such steep steps again. He was going to kill himself by hurrying someday.

By some miracle, he managed to find a second set of drawstring pants.  
Feliks himself didn't strike an imposing figure at an even one-sixty-five centimeters, but he was still a bunch taller than Ravis and so, the pants would have to be rolled up quite a bit.  
The smallest shirt he could find that wasn't his favorite long-sleeved Oxford-style dress shirt, however, would still look like a Roman tunic on little Latvia.  
_No cóż_ **(Oh, well)**

Once Latvia had finished, he handed him the clothes and waited for him to come out.

The total effect was much more comical than he expected. The shirt hung off one shoulder and the pants bunched up at the feet, forming the overall appearance of a puppy that hasn't quite grown into his skin yet. To add to the hilarity of the situation, the wet hair drooped over one eye listlessly, despite sticking up in back as proof of a futile attempt to towel-dry it.

Feliks bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. Ravis reminded him so much of a younger (and blonde) Toris, it hurt. The same dreamy expression and petite stature- though in the end, Liet had grown a good six centimeters taller than Feliks. But then again, he was and would always be unusually short  
From the younger nation's bright eyes, Poland deduced that he was once again feeling slightly healthier.

"Great. Do you think you could come downstairs with me, so that I can perform a few phone calls?"

Ravis nodded, instinctively reaching for his hand for support as they descended the stairs.  
For the first time in his (recently proved to be rather long) life, Poland felt a sudden and unexpected pang of jealousy toward all the nations who had grown up with younger siblings.  
He led the child to the couch and gently draped the blanket from last night over him.  
"Are you okay here?"

A nod.

"Fine. You can, like, watch some TV if you want. Most of the channels are in Polish, but I get, like, the basic news channels in the original languages, if you're interested. Plus…" he winked mischievously.  
"I get Cartoon Network and Boomerang in English."

He picked up the remote and turned on the television to the mentioned channel, then handed Latvia the device.  
"You adjust volume like that, move to the EP Guide like that, and turn the television off like that. All set?"

"Yeah… Thank you." Ravis smiled in his direction.  
It never stopped shocking Feliks how polite the child was. Definitely much better-behaved than he was at that age.

At ten or eleven, Feliks Łukasiewicz hadn't even dreamed of being a Country, Nation, Kingdom, Crown, _Rzeczpospolita_, or anything else. The King had been in charge of the country. He had been in charge of running around with a wooden sword chasing cats, sneaking jam, and sometimes going to Sunday school (when he didn't choose to play hooky, sneak out, and play war with other kids). Basically, he had been the troublesome scamp of a kid that eleven-year-olds are in every century.

Until he had been told who he was at sixteen. That was the moment when he stopped being Feliks Łukasiewicz the human and began to be Poland the nation.

…But he didn't have time to reminisce. _Not now, not today.__  
_Not when he had an investigation to begin. And he already had several prime suspects

* * *

**My very favorite part is writing phone calls XD Review, please?**


	5. Chapter 4

**Remember how I said I liked phone calls...?  
...Yeah. This chapter...**

**I improved some of the speech patterns in the calls, so they flow a bit better now.**

* * *

The very sound of the voice on the other side of the line made him want to smash the receiver against the wall.

"Little Feliks Łukasiewicz. How nice it is to hear from you again, _da?"_

_Patience, Feliks. Don't hang up yet._Cierpliwości_. You won't get anything out of him by losing it.__  
_"Yes. It is… _nice_ to hear from you as well, Russia." _  
_He was careful to remove any interjections such as "like" and "yeah?" that he commonly used in his speech.

"Have you heard about what happened in Eastern Europe the night before? The Baltic states…" he placed a finger to his lips to signal to Latvia not to reveal his presence.  
Ravis had already curled up into a frightened- and silent- ball at the very mention of Russia's name

"…And your sisters as well. Apparently, they were abducted during the night."

"I have been informed of this. As a matter of the fact, I have already been twice telephoned, by England and France, as suspect! That is bizarre! You do not think of me as suspect, _da?"_

Feliks wanted nothing more than to shout _"I condemned well do,"_ but bit his tongue at the last second.  
"I am simply considering all the options, that's all." He said evenly. "And I thought you might know something more than me in this case."

"As the matter of fact, I know equally little as you in this case. I have been… worried for my allies of old."  
_Yeah. Right._  
"…But if you would all agree to once again become a parts of my country, perhaps together, we could…"

"_Thank_ you." Poland interrupted him firmly. "I'll pass."

"As you wish. But you may change your mind, and then when you fail you will come running for help…"  
Feliks wanted to say many things to Russia, but contained himself because of the child in the room. Plus, if he lost it and shouted, that would mean that Russia won this little psychological war of theirs. (Poland was one of two people who could admit to having a legitimate psychological war with Russia, because a war meant not only attacks but counterattacks. And while he himself never 'attacked' Russia per se, he never exactly caved in to attacks either. The other two were America and Germany.)

He took a deep breath through his nose and strained to keep his voice level.  
"As you may or may not have been informed, I am a full member of the European Union, United Nations, and NATO." He smiled in satisfaction, sure that that last one would bring some bitter memories to Russia.  
"So you don't at all have to worry about me _'running for help_' to you. Now… if you'd excuse me, I have something important to do, so I'd like to tell you: _żegnaj."_

After a brief pause, he added, using his limited knowledge of Russian:  
_"Прощай... и удачи с обманывают никого."_ Good-bye, and good luck with fooling anyone.  
He hung up to an angry shout of _"So you __do __speak Russian after all!"_

_Well, oops.__ He had managed to keep up a successful façade of being unable (or unwilling) to learn Russian for the past three hundred years, while as a matter of fact, he could understand spoken Russian perfectly well and was even able to speak it to a certain extent._

Ravis had been observing him, wide-eyed, since he had started the phone call, but nearing the end he had begun to look at Feliks with a mixture of fear and admiration. Yes, so the Pole's Russian wasn't perfect, but it was the thought that counted, wasn't it? He had insulted Russia _in his own language_.

Had the Pole been able to read his thoughts (which he wasn't, not _yet_ anyway) he would have seen something to the effect of: _Anyone who can talk to Mr. Russia like that and not get punished must be__very__powerful._

Unfortunately for Ravis, he had the bad habit of blurting out his thoughts before they made a second check in his brain, especially under stress- which had gotten him into a lot of trouble on numerous occasions. The same thing happened this time, with him voicing the thought before he had had time to think it through.

Feliks raised an eyebrow. "Really?"  
Any annoyance or irritation he had felt after finishing the phone call on a dead end or revealing that he did indeed speak Russian (as well as satisfaction at having made cool, cynical Russia lose his temper at him) seemed to evaporate from his face as he fixed his eyes on the youth.

Latvia wanted nothing more than to sink into the ground at the moment. Blushing madly and tugging at the front of his shirt nervously, he stammered:  
"I-I-I mean… y-you said… and I…"

Poland gave him a surprised smile, somewhat flattered by the child's disarming honesty.  
"I appreciate you saying that, but I suppose I'm just, like, supernaturally irritating if I want to be… and have powerful allies. Though I suppose being, like, the 9th largest country in Europe doesn't hurt."

Latvia nodded. "Aren't you scared that you'll be invaded if you provoke him like that?"

Feliks shook his head. "Not really, no. Like I said before, I'm a member of the UN, EU, and NATO, not to begin to list all of those…" (_useless clubs whose only goal is to keep up appearances_, he thought) "…organizations and if Russia declares war on me, excuse me, on _Poland_, he will be declaring war on NATO. You should know, you're a member, aren't you?"

"Of all three." Latvia affirmed.

"Then remember that sometime, okay?" The taller nation leaned in to ruffle his hair.  
"If you ever, like, get in real big trouble, you'll have the big guns like England, France, and the US on your side, yeah? And me, of course." _Or, if trends stick around, you'll have me and some of the smaller Nations on your side at least._

"Then why aren't they looking for Eduard and the others?" Ravis wanted to know.

Feliks bit his lip. "Because… it's complicated politics." That was his way of saying _I've got no idea_. "Neither Lithuania, Estonia, nor any of the other countries have officially been invaded as far as I know. I'd have already been alerted if they had. I think this has… more to do with, like, the people themselves, not the countries they represent, yeah? Are you following?"  
A nod. "Yeah. And as long as it doesn't, like, concern the nations, the EU aren't really _obligated_ to help. Don't get me wrong!" He quickly added, seeing the look growing on the Latvian's face.  
"I will do my best to help you all, as far as I can. I promised, didn't I?"

Another nod. Ravis had fixed his eyes on a point far in the distance  
"Mr. Poland? Can I ask you a question?" He asked finally.

"Only if you call me Feliks." He replied, curious as to what question he might have had.

"Why are you so different from the other big countries? You're…"

_Ouch. Should have seen that one coming.__  
_"Immature? Childish? Eccentric? _Brakuje piątej klepki?"_**(Colloquial- equivalent of "Several sandwiches short of a picnic")** Feliks suggested, bracing himself for the worst.

"No. You care about what happened, don't you?"

Poland stared at him, uncomprehending.  
"Y-yeah, like, of course I do. Anyone would care."

"But not like that. They would care about losing an ally or gaining a new enemy. I used to think that all of the bigger countries were that way, calculating and indifferent. You actually _care_ about what happened. That's why you're different."

The older nation didn't move or speak for a long time, attempting to understand what the kid had just said. Had it been anyone else, he would have looked for a hook, sarcasm, a hidden insult. But the kid had said it openly, honestly, matter-of-factly. And that was what he couldn't understand.  
His hatred toward Russia suddenly doubled when he heard him add:  
"I'm-I'm sorry. I didn't mean to insult you or anything!"

How could anyone treat this sweet, innocent being in front of him that badly?

"Don't apologize." He said finally. He had to force himself to start moving again.  
"You haven't said anything wrong."

"I never know when I do so I do it always when I say something." Ravis confessed, again grasping the front of his shirt, almost as if he wanted to hide his hands but wasn't allowed to.

"…You haven't said anything, like, really wrong since you first came here. Don't worry, I'm a hard person to insult."

That incident lay at the back of his mind as he rose to make another unpleasant phone call, hopefully more productive than his previous, yet doubtfully any more enjoyable.  
_"Hallo."_ A harsh voice responded on the other side of the line.  
"Italy, if this is you, I have already told you that-!"

_"Guten Tag."_ Feliks introduced himself to Germany in his own language, interrupting his monologue.  
"This is Poland."

_"Polen. Guten Tag."_ He got a stiff greeting in return.

_"Niemcy. Dzień dobry."_ He responded in kind coolly, deciding not to work around the subject.  
"You know I wouldn't be calling you to make pleasantries."

"I realize this. What, then, is your reason for calling?" Germany didn't sound any more pleased at this encounter.

"Last night, sometime between…" He tried to obtain a decent estimate. "2300 hours and 0230 hours, my time zone, fo…_ive_ Eastern European countries had been abducted by a team of men in black stealth uniforms, bearing guns of a large caliber. I believe that you understand my immediate and justified conclusions."

"I do. But this time, despite what it may seem, they are entirely incorrect. You distrust me, and that is natural. And this would seem like my style, wouldn't it?"

"Almost like déjà vu, isn't it?" Poland interrupted coldly. "_They_ attacked _you_ first, that's the story, yeah?"

"Let's not bring up old harms. I invaded you to expand my borders. Nations tend to do that." Feliks was painfully reminded of his own journal entry from the night before. _That's what nations DO!__  
_"And while I may have gone slightly overboard…"

"Slightly overboard?! You call _Oświęcim_ 'slightly overboard'?! You call…"

_"ENOUGH!"_ Germany snapped, and though Feliks was seriously disinclined to acquiesce his request, he decided to listen if he wanted to piece the puzzle together.

"I have no idea what happened this morning. Your accusations are unfounded and insulting, seeing as I wouldn't have had any particular reason to assault Eastern Europe."

"And you had reasons to assault me during the Second World War?" Feliks practically spat.

"More than you'd believe. But I am saying that I had nothing to do with the event of which you speak. Now, if you have nothing else to say to me, _auf Wiedersehen._ And the best of luck to you on your investigation."

_"Do widzenia."_Poland replied, shutting off the connection. He squeezed the plastic casing until it squeaked, breathing heavily, trying to calm down. He had found another dead-end. And in the most infuriating way possible. And worst of all, he couldn't help but see the parallels between him and Vilnius and Germany and Warsaw.

He mentally ticked off a name on his suspect list. Russia still had a question mark next to him because Poland didn't trust the large nation. He was gathering dead-ends. Nobody would directly admit to having done it.  
It was time to change tactics. If he couldn't get direct information from anybody, he'd try to get it indirectly. He needed somebody neutral.

Poland scrolled through his contact list, trying to find a number he hadn't called since before WWII.

Finally, after a long and grueling search (for some reason, he had the number listed under _'Wartime Communication Hotline'_), he pressed "call."

_"Halo…_ Switzerland?" He asked when the phone picked up, but was met with a prerecorded message.

"This is Bosch Zwingli. You have reached my voice mailbox. If you want me to relay a message to another country_, hang up right now_. I only agreed to provide this service during wartime. Italy, this means you.  
If you want me to join your side in a war, you are wasting your time. Otherwise, please leave a message or call my cell phone at…"

A commotion was heard on the other end of the line, and a vastly different voice answered.  
"_Hallo?_ This is Lili Zwingli."

"Hi, Lili!" Poland greeted Liechtenstein. "It's Feliks Łukasiewicz, Poland."

"Hi, Mr. L!" She called excitedly, unsure of how to pronounce his surname.

_Well. Close enough_. Feliks was almost certain that there wasn't a letter "Ł" in German.

"How are you?" She continued to talk. "I've been great, and _guess what__!_ Today…"

"Lili… I'm sorry, but I don't have a lot of time to talk today. Is your brother around?"

"Oh, yes! Big Brother is right there, motioning for me not to… oh. Sorry! I mean, he isn't there at all. He's busy doing… _what are you doing?"_ That last part was said in an extremely audible whisper.

"Never mind. Just give me the phone." An annoyed voice could be heard on the other side of the line. _"Hallo."_

"Hello, Switzerland. It's Poland."

"Łukasiewicz… nice to hear from you. I apologize for trying to avoid you, but 'Mr. L' could stand for practically anything." His pronunciation was better than both Germany's and Liechtenstein's… but still far from correct.

"It's no problem. Actually, I, like, need to ask you about something."  
He once more detailed the kidnapping to a tense silence.  
"…Have you seen or noticed, like, anything at all?"

There was a long silence on Switzerland's side. Feliks briefly wondered if the nation hadn't hung up when a reply finally came.  
"I might be able to help you. But I can't say anything else over the phone, your receiver might be bugged."

"…What are you suggesting?"

"Meet me in three hours. Where are you?"

"Warsaw. In _Poland_. And I must add that it is January, and, like _every_ January, there are forty centimeters of snow on the ground and it's still snowing. How on Earth do you, like, plan to get over here in three hours?"

"That is my concern. Meet me at… what is the conspicuous skyscraper in Warsaw with the clock tower called?"

_"Pałac Kultury i Nauki._ But you can't possibly…"

"I'll meet you there. Come _alone."_ Feliks' mind immediately flew to Ravis, and he tried to protest but was cut off by Zwingli:

"Come alone or don't come at all. Anyone could compromise our security."

"…Fine. Like, whatever. I'll meet you there."  
There was a click on the other side of the line and the call ended.

_"Wariat konspiracyjny"_ **("Conspiracy nut")** Feliks semi-laughed, putting the phone away, but his expression quickly turned serious for a second (before promptly returning to his usual, confident half-grin).  
How was he going to meet up with Switzerland alone? He couldn't leave Ravis home alone. He couldn't bring him along, not with the weather as it was. He'd have to get someone to stay with him. Someone trustworthy.

His mind ran down a list of European countries.  
Spain? No, good luck trusting him with babysitting. Romano might have come out of it in one piece, but the Italian was, from what Feliciano had told him, quite a tough nut to crack. Portugal? Not any better. England? In court. France? Irresponsible (God knows what he might have taught Latvia), plus, Feliks assumed, in court with England. Italy. Germany. Czech. Slovakia. Serbia. Croatia. He had an argument against each of them. Too childish, untrustworthy altogether (Germany), too distant, or too serious… Plus, half of them were complete strangers to him, and he just didn't _do_ telephoning strangers.  
But did it _have_ to be a country…?

* * *

**NOW! SURPRISE SURPRISE! Chapters Preface-4 were all one huge game of ****_Find the Reference_****! The first person to identify them all correctly gets a one-shot/songfic of their choice!  
REVIEW! Maybe you'll be the lucky reader!**


	6. Chapter 5

**Y'all were expecting this ever since Feliks mentioned "my beautiful Warsaw," weren't you? :) Y'all know me too well...  
Read please!**

* * *

Chapter Five

_Does it have to be a country? _The thought nagged at the back of Feliks' brain. _Couldn't it be… a city?_

"Okay… so, it's, like, good news-bad news time. Which do you want first?"

He could see Ravis' eyes light up with a glimmer of hope, dimmed only by apprehension of the bad news.  
"…Whichever you prefer." He said finally.

"Well… the good news is that I think I've, like, got a lead on Liet and the others."  
The expression of relief on the child's face was probably rivaled by his own.

"…Yeah. And I, like, have to meet up with Switzerland later, I think that's, like, a huge leap forward. But that's where the bad news comes in. I have to go meet him alone- he, like, insisted on it. You know how paranoid he gets."

"But then…" Ravis asked quietly. "What am I going to do?"

"You're going to stay at one of my friends' house for an hour or two." Feliks answered confidently. The person he was thinking of was very much to be trusted.

Ravis, however, didn't seem to think so. His eyes widened, and he got a look on his face that was reminiscent of someone trapped in a net, knowing that there was a dragon in the vicinity.  
"…What?" He squeaked, backing against the wall.

"Don't worry, it'll be all right. I'll be back in an hour or so, it won't be so bad." He smiled at Ravis, who nodded obediently but didn't seem especially reassured.

Feliks opened his phone and made the fifth phone call of that day. This number he knew by heart, and typed it in in a flash. _+48-163-264-128_  
He waited as it rang, a tune he recognized as Niemen's _"Sen o Warszawie" _**("Dream of Warsaw")** playing in the background.

_Narcissist,_ he thought, biting his lip in a momentary effort not to laugh.  
The person he was calling was none other than the personification of Warsaw.

Each of his capitals (or former capitals) had a representative human (it helped in making decisions if there were more voices, of reason or otherwise), and were cousins. The eldest of the three was, of course, _Gniezno_, or Lech Orzeł,** (literally: "Lech Eagle") **and the only male. The second-oldest was Cracow, or Ola Wawelska, **(literally: "Alex from Wawel")** and the youngest by several years, and closest to Feliks' current age, was Warsaw, Halina Wagarowicz.

_"Halo?"_ A female voice answered finally. From the sound of it, she had just been running or similar, because she was slightly out of breath.  
"Feliks? Is that you?"

"Yeah. Are you, like, at home?"

"About to be. I was called in for a meeting."  
In her human identity, Halina was a politician and running for president of Warsaw **(also known as mayor, but the former is the official title).** Despite the fact that, as a representative of a geographical region, she didn't technically have to work, and the mere fact of Warsaw running for mayor of Warsaw was bizarre in itself (of which Feliks reminded her on a daily basis), she insisted on keeping her job.

"On, like, Saturday, Sawa?" Feliks rolled his eyes, glad she couldn't see him, using the nickname that came from the Polish legend about Warsaw coming to be.

"Yes. National emergencies don't use a weekday schedule."

"Had it been a national emergency, don't you think _I_ would have been informed?" He teased her.

"So it wasn't a _national_ emergency, _mądralo_**." ("Smart-aleck.") **She sighed in mock irritation.  
"There have been some unexpected problems with the building of the second subway route. It was supposed to have opened late last year, but we still haven't been able to make it work."

"And this concerns you because…?"

"Point A, as future president, I need to be on top of these things. And point B, I happen to _be_ the city as well, so I believe that that does indeed concern me. And point C, can't I sit in at a press conference just because it's interesting?"

"Well…"

"Oh, shut up." She laughed. "Seriously though. Why are you calling?"

"You remember when, I, like, helped you out that one time and you, like, said you owed me big-time, yeah?"

"…I might. What's the hook?"

"I need a huge favor."

"Shoot."

"Okay. So." He quickly simplified the problem for the fifth time in a day, this time adding the part about his meeting with Switzerland.  
"…And I, like, need someone to watch over Latvia for an hour or two."

"Can't you leave him at your home? A ten-year-old kid can take care of himself for an hour. _Boże_, Feliks, don't be so overprotective."

"Well… I can't leave a sick child home alone. That would be, like, cruel or something."

Halina paused. "…All right. I suppose I can rearrange my day so I can spend some time with Latvia while you're gone. But drive him over as soon as possible, yeah?"

"Gotcha. Thanks, Sawa. I, like, owe you a billion, _but_…" He trailed off awkwardly.

"…But?"

"…I'm from Warsaw. I ride the public transport, I don't, like, have a car." True story. He had never learned to drive simply because he didn't think he needed it,

"…Is that a jab or a bad joke?" The city was instantly defensive. Feliks suddenly realized exactly what he had said. _Oh… snap._

"What? No! Sorry, that was a stupid joke. Seriously, though, I don't have a license."

"Feliks…" He could hear her sigh, annoyed for real.

"…Can we save the preaching for later?"

"…" He could distantly catch her muttering something in his direction. The microphone didn't catch the individual words, but from the context Feliks could tell that it wasn't about rainbows and unicorns.  
"…I'm on the bus right now. I'll be home in fifteen minutes, I'll drive over and pick both of you up then. You seriously owe me this time."

"Thanks a million. See you in a few."

"Be there in thirty_. Cześć."_ She ended the call.

An unspoken question emanated from Ravis, who was still looking very worried. _What is going to happen?_

"My friend agreed to pick us up and stay with you for a while." Ravis looked as if he was about to cry, torn between hindering the investigation and fear of what the consequences of this "short" stay might be.  
"Don't worry, though. She's pretty cool, and I'm sure you'll like each other. She reminds me of Liet, sometimes, actually."

"…Really?"

"Of course. Do you think I pal around with just anybody?" This was meant to sound raffish but instead had to come out sort of accusing, judging by Ravis' reaction.

"No! Of course not, I didn't mean to suggest that, sir! I'm sorry, please don't think I meant…"

"Hey!" Feliks raised his hands in defeat. "I was kidding, okay?"

"…I'm sorry…"

A slightly awkward silence ensued, during which Feliks tried to figure out something to say and Ravis simply stood at attention (despite Feliks' best efforts to persuade him to do otherwise; the blonde suddenly and guiltily wondered exactly how many hours a day he had spent like this at Russia's).

They were rescued from this atmosphere of waiting by the ringing of Feliks' cellphone.  
_"Halo?"_

"I'm here."

"Be right out."  
Feliks quickly pulled on an autumn windbreaker and helped Ravis into his own winter coat.

"…You can't do that, Mr. Feliks!" The boy protested meekly. "You'll freeze!"

"I'll be fine." He insisted. "I'm used to this sort of temperatures. I, like, live here, remember?"

"I'm used to winters, too." Latvia offered.

"But you're sick, and I'm older. End of story."

"…Yes, sir."  
The Pole gave the zipper one last jerk and ushered them outside, out the door, and through the gate.

He looked around to see a familiar ancient red Fiat by his driveway.  
"Hey." He smiled at Warsaw, letting Ravis into the backseat and getting into the passenger's.

"Hey." Halina returned the greeting, waiting for them to buckle up.  
She wasn't a tall woman, though a good seven centimeters taller than Poland, with hair that was that odd shade somewhere in between being a blonde and brunette cut in a functional bob just below her ears.  
When Feliks gave her a longer look, he could still see the classic beauty she had been before the war, but that had destroyed all that.  
She had been completely annihilated, and despite having coped very well and returned to normalcy faster than anyone had expected, there was still something broken behind the purposeful look in her eyes.  
Another person on his conscience. Did he ever make anything but enemies?

"All ready?" She asked toward the boy in back, and at the "yes, ma'am" affirmation received, she backed out of her parking spot.  
"So… what's your name, kid?" She continued to try to make conversation, not turning around. Ravis had become quiet and scared once more.

"I'm-I'm Ravis. Ravis Galante."

"Nice to meet you, Ravis. You can call me Sawa, everyone does. You'll be staying at my house for a while now." It was evident she was trying to help by lightening the atmosphere, but that last sentence only seemed to make things worse.

"Yes, ma'am." The child replied again simply, and they rode in silence for a bit.

"Feliks…" she spoke up once more finally. "D'you want me to drive you down to the _Pałac_?"

"Nah, I can take the number 504 straight down there. Thanks, though."

"In this snow? You'll be lucky if it's only 20 minutes late arriving. It's _my_ city, I should know."

"Then I'll, like, take the bus from 20 minutes ago… seriously, I'll be fine, yeah?"

"Wearing a windbreaker?"

"It's not, like, that cold out." Feliks avoided her gaze, trying not to let her see that he was lying through his teeth. The freezing cold had cut through him like a fiery knife the very second he stepped out of his house.

"You idiot. It's negative-ten. There is no way I'm letting you walk all that way looking like that."

"Whatever's best for you" Feliks shrugged. He really didn't want to walk all the way to the nearest bus stop (he was short and slight,_ definitely_ not suited for the cruel Polish winters) but on the other hand… he didn't want to drag Latvia and Warsaw around like he had Lithuania. Liet wasn't talking to him at the moment, and that was the last thing that he wanted to happen with those two.

"You're coming with us." She insisted, changing lanes at the very last second to merge with the right-turn-only.

Halina put the radio on _Eska Rock_ to fill the silence, and nobody protested. They had to drive slowly because the roads were covered with snowy slush, but even so, Feliks arrived there with two hours to kill before their meeting.

"I'll, like, see you in a few hours, yeah!" He assured Sawa for the umpteenth time in a row, at which she only sent him a bemused look and took one hand off of the wheel to wave.

"I don't doubt it. Get inside or you'll freeze." She replied, closing the window and driving away with a final wave.

Feliks watched her drive away, more nervous that he dared admit even to himself.  
He and America had that thing in common. They never let on that they were scared or hurt (unless it was complaining for show), just waved it off and kept going with a "Nah, I'm fine," or a _"Spoko" _**(Colloquial: "S'ok"- derived from Polish "spokojnie," "calmly")**. But now, he was terrified of what he could find out.  
What if it had been Germany after all? No matter how hard he tried to forget, he _had_ been easily beaten by him during World War II and there was no question that should another open war break out, he wouldn't stand a chance alone.  
And he wasn't entirely sure he could count on the EU. The last time he had trusted someone (namely England and France) to back him up had ended catastrophically. No. Feliks had to account for having to act by himself… as usual.

Or Russia? There was a likelihood that it was him, after all. Poland didn't trust him one bit and he was still the prime suspect. And the former was at least 54 times larger. Not to mention his mistreatment of the former Baltic states and Poland himself… Feliks almost wanted it to be him so he could punch him without being accused of unprovoked attack.  
_Unprovoked, my foot._

But what if it was a new enemy altogether? All Feliks seemed to be doing recently was making enemies. Powerful enemies and less powerful ones, but enemies nonetheless.

The Pole realized that he was shivering with a slight jolt- whether from the cold or otherwise- and decided to wait inside. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and walked inside with a slow step, still lost in thought. He suddenly wished he'd brought a book to read. It could take his mind off of things. He definitely needed to take his mind off things.

* * *

Meanwhile, Sawa was having her own problems as she gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles turned white.

Despite the Varsovian stereotype, she was never one to get very irritated during driving, and was as a matter of fact a safe driver when compared to other cities or nations.

But now, she was trapped behind a gray intercity bus that seemed not to be able to drive over 45 kilometers an hour, and was close to pulling over and giving him a piece of her mind.  
All of a sudden, the bus took an unexpected right turn and before Sawa had time to react, she had driven out onto a crossing on a red light.

_"Cholera!"_ she exclaimed, before giving Ravis a sideways glance. If anybody asked, she'd say that Feliks had taught him that word- she had gotten the habit from him in the first place, after all.

A passing driver coming from her left gave her a honk on the horn and an aggravated_ "Jak jeździsz, baranie!"_ **(Literally: "What are you driving like, you sheep!" Colloquial: "Watch where you're going, dimwit!")  
**She quickly gassed the car to get off of the unfortunate crossing as fast as possible, forgetting to shift her gears in the confusion and causing the engine to stall right in the middle of the road. She frantically pulled the key out and tried to restart the car.

_"Szlag. Szlag, szlag, szlag." _She muttered as it refused to start.  
She took a calming breath and started it one more time. It worked this time. Breathing a shaky sigh of relief, she put the pedal to the metal and finally shot off the street right as the light turned green.

A quiet whimper reminded her of the car's other passenger.  
"Sorry." She smiled at Ravis apologetically, sounding disproportionately cheerful even in her own ears. "This doesn't normally happen when I drive, I promise."

The boy looked up at her mutely with panic in his eyes. He was gripping the armrest on the door for dear life and had turned rather green. Still, he didn't comment, so Halina took this as a good sign.

"Won't happen again. I've been meaning to get rid of this jalopy anyway." She mentally apologized to the car, which she was pretty attached to.

For the rest of the ride, Ravis clutched the seat under him and didn't say a word, surveying Sawa distrustfully every time her hand danced over the gear shift or touched a knob on the dashboard.

They arrived at her house without further incident. Sawa owned a flat in the so-called _Starówka_,**(translation: Old City, literally: "Oldie")**or the Warsaw downtown.  
At fifty-five square meters, the house wasn't small at all for downtown standards, and especially for a one-person flat, but America would have pronounced it a sardine can.  
The furniture was minimalistic and slightly Spartan, as if she hadn't really moved into it yet, though some personal memorabilia hung on the walls or stood in various places.

She helped Ravis out of the car and up three flights of stairs, by the end of which he was exhausted, severely weakened by the illness.  
"Are you all right?" She questioned, feeling his forehead. Uncomfortably warm.

Unlike Feliks, Sawa was infinitely more prepared for such a case despite not having children of her own. She quickly poured out a measure of Febrisan Kids and put it on the counter.

"I'm not allowed to give it to you on an empty stomach. Have you eaten?"

"Nuh-uh." He slurred slightly. "I'm not hungry… though…"

Of course he had thrown up if Feliks had given him the drug on an empty stomach. _Geniusz, Feliks._

"…All right. We can do that in a minute, then. But I need you to drink a glass of water for me, okay? Or else you'll get dehydrated and I'll have to take you to the hospital."

"But I don't wanna go to a hospital!"

_Great. Now it sounds like I'm threatening him. _She grabbed a medium-sized glass from the cupboard and the water from another. _  
_"Drink all of it, then."

"What if I throw up?"  
Of all the times to stop being scared and start to act obstinate, he had chosen the very worst.

"Look, I may not have the same authority as a Nation perhaps…" She got turned around, eyes flashing.  
She was by now very used to being treated unequally due to her status as a city, and the capital of a country at that. Everyone just expected her to be a smaller version of Feliks. But she had had a stressful morning, and the car almost-accident had driven her to the brink, and she regretted shouting as soon as she started.

Ravis flinched at her anger, and her tone softened a bit. Only a bit.  
"…but I know and only want what's best for you. If you throw up, that's normal. It happens. You're sick. There's no reason to get dehydrated because of it."

He took the glass from her hand cautiously and emptied it slowly.

"Great." Sawa encouraged, reaching into the cupboard for a few crackers.  
"Now eat these so that you aren't on an empty stomach."

She handed them for him to eat and turned to fish for her cell phone in her messenger bag.  
"I'll call a doctor and see if we can get an appointment for today. Without an appointment…eh." She waved her hand dismissively.  
"Let's just say that public healthcare is slow going on weekdays. On weekends, you might as well check in, go home and take a nap, and get back in time. I've been telling Feliks to do something about it but he insists that it's not as bad as it is." She gave him a fleeting glance before picking up her coat, which she had left on a hanger by the door, and rifling through it.

"They're not poisoned." She insisted, seeing that he wasn't eating as much as inspecting them.

Ravis blushed scarlet and quickly brought one of the wafers to his mouth. Halina noticed that he had perked up considerably after the glass of water with a small note of satisfaction.

She finally found the device in a hidden inside pocket and pulled up the yellow pages app. Unlike Feliks, she had a smartphone so that she could constantly be in touch with the rest of the city and _powiat_ **(Polish political division equivalent to a county),** wherever she was. This was useful both for having to take more detailed care of her city than a nation would have to and for continuing her private career as (she hoped) future president of the city.

She could hear Poland's monologue in her head as she entered the number she'd found.  
_"C'mon, Sawa, you're, like, already in charge of the city. What do you need an official title for if you ARE Warsaw? All you're doing is spreading yourself thin."_

Her thoughts were cut short when a polite, female voice answered in Polish:

"_Halo?_ This is the LuxMed clinic."

"Hi." She greeted the receptionist I'm the same language and spoke with her for a few minutes.  
Her smile faltered within instants, but quickly returned, looking rather forced.  
"What do you mean_, closed?_ You're a public institution and it's only past fourteen. No, I don't care that it's a weekend, you should be open."

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but there's only one doctor on shift and she's booked for all of today."

"How much funding are you getting from the city?"  
She ignored the receptionist's condescending reply. "As a matter of fact, I know more about that than you most likely do. Budget cuts or no… I said, budget cuts or no, kids get sick, and…"

This went on for several more minutes before Sawa hung up. One could almost _see_ dark storm clouds gathering over her head. She tried seven and a half other places (the 'and a half' was the one that didn't pick up) and finally gave up.  
"This." She gestured to the phone. "This is healthcare on weekends."

She was met with a blank gaze that basically implied _'what are you talking about? I have no idea what you were talking about, what language were you even speaking?'  
_Actually, that was more of _her_ interpretation. The look most likely simply meant _'huh?'_

"Well, whatever. I'll tell Feliks to take you on Monday. You'll still be here, right?"

"I… I don't know." Ravis whispered after a long pause, a tear slipping down his cheek.  
"If I'm there than that means everybody is still kidnapped and that means that anything could happen to them and that it would be my fault."

"Shh." She whispered, instantly at the stricken child's side, giving his shoulder a squeeze. She felt him stiffen under it, but unlike Feliks, she didn't think very much of it- not because of neglect, but because she simply had no idea what Latvia's previous life had been like.  
"It's in no way your fault, and I doubt it'll take that long. Because if Feliks is one thing, he's stubborn. He won't give up until he finds a way out… and it won't be the easy way, either. It'll be his way, the way he wants it to be."

"Isn't he in danger then?"

"Are you kidding? He's gotten in big trouble more times than I can count. We've been seized, annexed (or attempted to have been), and invaded in pretty much every way possible. Not to mention that contrary to my better judgment, he's pulled me and the capitals before me into wars that nobody thought we could win. On more than one occasion, the most optimistic outlook was that he would die painlessly, but here he is. No permanent harm."

"Have you come out with no permanent harm?"  
Sawa froze. She looked at the childish innocence on his face and wondered what she should say.

"Eventually… yes." She replied in a flat tone, not meeting his eyes. Her hand rose to her neck to finger a scar that remained from a bullet that barely missed killing her during WWII almost without her will.

"But you're hurt." He stated rather than asked. Sawa was surprised to see the startling intelligence hidden in those round violet eyes behind the quiet and scared attitude.

"Hurt…?" She repeated, unsure of what to say.  
She eventually regained her composure enough to reply: "No. No, Warsaw has been rebuilt and I'm just fine."

"I'm sorry." Ravis said quietly. "I didn't mean to ask about something private."

"No. You didn't." Sawa replied, not really paying attention. "Go ahead and ask if you're curious, I don't mind. But did you finish the crackers?"

"Sorry…" he apologized again.

"Don't be sorry. I think you've eaten…" she glanced at it. Approximately one and a half wafers.  
"…enough for it not to be an empty stomach…"_ I think_. _"_Now, drink the syrup." She instructed.

The boy closed his eyes and swallowed it bravely, making a face but choking it down.  
_"Zuch chłopak."_** (literally: "scout boy," colloquial: "brave kid") **She praised him, ruffling his hair.

* * *

Feliks glanced at his watch. Switzerland was running twenty minutes late. Not that he was surprised, really- the flight itself took three hours if he was lucky, not counting customs and airport time- but Bosch had always been very punctual.

Despite his growing apprehension, he had to smile at the thought of him and Lili at customs.

* * *

_In Feliks' imagination, an unamused Swiss airport security guard stared down Bosch as he tried to explain the gun slung across his back, Liechtenstein hiding behind him under the former's hard gaze._

_"This is ridiculous. I am in the military, do you not see the uniform? I have a license to carry a semiautomatic…"_

_"While on duty. While this person here," he gestured to Lili, "wouldn't be with you if you were. Your brother, am I correct?"_

_"Sister." He corrected instinctively. The girl had worn a hat over the bow and so her hairstyle remained somewhat androgynous.  
"But the fact remains. Stand down, officer! I am your superior as…"_

_The vision turned "Chibi" in his imagination as a shouting match erupted in the airport and more guards appeared from nowhere._

* * *

He amused himself with imagining what would happen next: the local _Polizei_ would appear and take everyone to the gray-bar hotel for an explanation.

It was, after all, everything he deserved for being paranoid enough to instill those security measures in the first place. It was almost as bad as America, but at least Alfred had terrorists to worry about and so had reasons for paranoia.  
The one person he felt sorry for in his supposed situation was Lili, who had been completely innocent. But Lili probably wouldn't even be there. Zwingli was too overprotective to let that happen.

He quickly erased her from his mental situation and continued to ponder on what could happen if he ever made it through customs.

The Polish customs weren't nearly as strict, but he seriously doubted that they would take kindly to what looked like an unfriendly foreign high-ranked military man using a child as a human shield, carrying a better weapon than they were at the moment.

It took him a long time to realize that the shouting match he was hearing wasn't in his imagination. It was very much real, coupled with repeated warning shots into the air.  
_Oh, there he is._

* * *

**Who can tell me what is the hidden meaning of Halina's name?  
...Y'all Poles keep your mouths shut, okay? ^.~ It's too easy for you!  
Please review! At five reviews, I will post the next chapter! :)**

**EDIT: I changed Ravis' attitude toward Sawa completely. It feels more believable this way.**


	7. Chapter 6

**Hey, all! I'm back with another two chapters, after only four reviews! I hope you enjoy!**

**(NOTE- I also corrected a few grammatical/punctuation/meritorial errors in previous chapters, so why don't y'all check it out?)**

**EDIT: This one is pretty much unchanged; I still dislike it but I don't know what else I can do with it.**

* * *

What was really happening to Bosch and, yes, Lili?

It couldn't be more different from any situation that Feliks had invented.

They had rented a private stealth jet and made the trip in little over an hour and a half. Despite the fact that Switzerland truly disliked spending any money at all, there was a look on his face that suggested urgency as he handed over his credit card.

Lili had had no idea that her Big Brother could pilot a jet.  
Or that he could do it well.  
Or that he would ever be extravagant enough to have an occasion to.

All those illusions were shattered as they got on board and he told her to buckle up in the copilot's seat and not mess with the controls. They landed not far from the Chopin Airport in Warsaw (who didn't even realize they were there) smoothly and silently.

The hardest part had to be getting out of the plane without looking suspicious and making it to the nearest bus stop. Lili had never been to Poland before, and so clung to Bosch's hand obediently as he obtained instructions in a broken German-English combination from someone who obviously spoke neither language very well.

Switzerland finally sighed and waved his hand in an annoyed fashion as he pulled out a notebook and drew a bus, an arrow, and a skyscraper with a clock in it along with a question mark.

Their conversant's eyes finally lit up in understanding as he took the paper and pencil, writing the numbers "175."

_"Jeden-siedem-pięć." _He explained in Polish, reading each number separately.

_"Ein-sieben-fünf?"_ Bosch repeated, just to make sure._ "Danke."_

"Welcome." The man responded vaguely in English, and they parted.

They would have been on time (hah! They'd have had half an hour to spare!) had it not been for some sort of a demonstration in the street, with a group of maybe twenty people all dressed similarly in white. As the bus stopped and opened its doors, unable to pass, Lili followed her Big Brother outside, rather confused when she realized that the crowd was speaking German amongst themselves.

Well… sort of. They were speaking with an accent she hadn't heard before, and it sounded very similar to Mr. Poland's accent… but it was definitely German. That was the first sign that she should have noticed that read _"something's not right." _The other was her Big Brother's reaction.

She could feel Switzerland tense up as he saw the rally.  
_"Scheiße! Bleib in meiner Nähe." _**("Stay close to me.") **He practically commanded her, his grip on her hand doubling.

"Big Brother! You're hurting me!" She exclaimed- so as not to say complained- in German, which instantly drew several looks from the surroundings. This didn't bode any good.

_Hoppla… _**(Whoops…)**

* * *

Feliks got up and ran to the door, but he suddenly froze when he saw the scene outside.

Bosch Zwingli was standing there, gripping the hand of a terrified Lili among a group of some sort all dressed in some sort of a white uniform, arguing in loud German with a pair of strangers- apparently the rally leaders- wearing (also white) hoods, so he couldn't see who it was.

It was, of course, evident who had fired the gun, and that it had only been shot into the air… for now.

Of all the times for his stranger phobia to rear its head, this had to be the worst. He knew he had to go in and do something! There were hostile inter-Nation interactions going on, and it was HIS country! (He somehow intuitively knew that those persons were also Nations, but he had no idea who.)

One second, he was cool and composed, but as soon as he noticed what was going on, it was as if his legs were about to give out from under him. He wanted to throw up, faint, and bolt all at once, and the only thing keeping him from doing so was the all-consuming fear that that might draw the attention of the foreigners.

He took a deep, calming breath, which- despite what he had read in those tacky "deal-with-the-fear" books- did absolutely nothing to help his nerves, and managed to make his legs stop shaking long enough to take a single step outside.

He wished with all of his heart he could just hide behind Liet, who, despite being dependent on his protection, was one of the few people who knew about and put up with said phobia- but managed to tell himself that that wasn't an option.

"For Liet." He hissed through clenched teeth, trying to force himself to move. "For the Commonwealth, for alliances…"

Hah… Nope. It was always worth a shot. He couldn't… he just couldn't. It already took all he had not to collapse just thinking about it. No matter how much he hated himself for it. And how much Liet would have hated him for it.

It was silly. He couldn't hide from strangers forever.  
_Why not, though? _It seemed like a temptingly good idea at the moment.

_Estonia. Belarus. Ukraine… Katyusha._ What about them? Could he do it for a pair of near-total strangers… and the woman he had for many years considered his cousin?  
"For Kasia." He whispered weakly, and swallowed hard and closed his eyes, trying to muster the courage to do anything.  
No matter how hard he thought of the others, and how disappointed they would be, and how much this made him feel like a cowardly, sniveling fool…

The shouting grew louder and more urgent. Nobody had noticed him. Yet.

In what had to be the lowest point in his career as a Nation, he turned around and ran back inside, hiding his head in his hands and allowing himself to remain in that position- fingers in his ears and hands over his eyes- until everything stopped. Very abruptly, the arguing was silenced and it was as if nothing had happened.

As soon as everyone was gone, part of him wanted just to sag against the chair he had taken a seat on in relief. It was over. He hadn't had to actually do anything.

…But Switzerland and Liechtenstein were also gone, whatever that meant. There was quite obviously nobody in the entire parking lot. Had he had the nerve to go up and actually do something- heck, even _SAY_ something… could this entire situation have been averted?

_Yeah. Probably._

And now… he didn't just have Liet and Estonia on his conscience, he had Lili (and yes, Zwingli by extension… but he could take care of himself) to worry about.  
What was wrong with him? He hadn't had a panic attack like that for… ever since he had really gotten acquainted in the international arena. God, he had made a fool of himself then…

There was just something about these people that made him feel uneasy. Not a lot of people had that talent. But coupled with the fact that they were (most likely hostile) strangers… _Boże_, why couldn't he just go up and do something for once in his life?  
He very neatly mentally omitted all the times that he HAD stood up for himself and Liet. It seemed that every step he took, he was trying to make up for his cowardice toward strangers by being brash around people he knew.

And eventually… it had driven him to lash out at Toris, as well…

Feeling more than a little depressed, Feliks pondered what to do next. As much as he hated the idea, he'd have to go and tell Sawa and Ravis what had happened.

The biting cold didn't seem to bother him anymore as he zipped his coat closed and started walking over the trampled snow where the fight had been.

How could he have left it that way? Zwingli, protecting Lili, against twenty… thirty, _fifty_, the number kept rising in his mind. He had been too scared to properly register anything, and his panicked mind had multiplied the crowd to what felt like a hundred men.

So he had run and hid. Like Italy, to say the least.

What RIGHT did he have to run and hide? His "job" was to stand up to people for his friends… _friend_… who didn't have the gall or insolence.

He was supposed to be the "insolent boy" whom Russia and Prussia had partitioned… several times over. And had come back.

He was supposed to be a phoenix. Not a chicken.

Had he been looking for clues (no matter how Sherlock Holmes that sounded), he would never have noticed anything. But as it was, he wasn't really paying attention to anything but feeling ashamed and guilty, and so didn't watch where he was going.

That was how he suddenly found himself lying face-first in the snow, having slipped on a patch of ice.  
Could this day get any better? Yeah, it could. He landed on top of something hard and lumpy, about the size of his fist.

_"Ała…" _he groaned, rubbing his arm where it had landed on the offending object. It turned out to be just a rock. Nothing more. On top of it lay a scrap of material, most likely having torn off of the clothes of another person who had landed the exact same way.

Not really thinking what he was doing, he picked up the fabric- wincing when he moved his arm, that was going to leave a serious bruise- and fingered it without paying too much attention.  
Suddenly, it hit him: he knew exactly what it was. He had seen it ten thousand times or maybe more.

But he didn't think… he hadn't seen it in exactly 488 years… it couldn't be… not now… not a coincidence like this. He had to be mistaken. He refused to even allow the alternative.

He was holding part of a thick battle-cloak. White with a thin black line along the edge. One that only one Nation wore. And he was dead.

What was really happening to Bosch and, yes, Lili?

It couldn't be more different from any situation that Feliks had invented.

They had rented a private stealth jet and made the trip in little over an hour and a half. Despite the fact that Switzerland truly disliked spending any money at all, there was a look on his face that suggested urgency as he handed over his credit card.

Lili had had no idea that her Big Brother could pilot a jet.  
Or that he could do it well.  
Or that he would ever be extravagant enough to have an occasion to.

All those illusions were shattered as they got on board and he told her to buckle up in the copilot's seat and not mess with the controls. They landed not far from the Chopin Airport in Warsaw (who didn't even realize they were there) smoothly and silently.

The hardest part had to be getting out of the plane without looking suspicious and making it to the nearest bus stop. Lili had never been to Poland before, and so clung to Bosch's hand obediently as he obtained instructions in a broken German-English combination from someone who obviously spoke neither language very well.

Switzerland finally sighed and waved his hand in an annoyed fashion as he pulled out a notebook and drew a bus, an arrow, and a skyscraper with a clock in it along with a question mark.

Their conversant's eyes finally lit up in understanding as he took the paper and pencil, writing the numbers "175."

_"Jeden-siedem-pięć." _He explained in Polish, reading each number separately.

_"Ein-sieben-fünf?"_ Bosch repeated, just to make sure._ "Danke."_

"Welcome." The man responded vaguely in English, and they parted.

They would have been on time (hah! They'd have had half an hour to spare!) had it not been for some sort of a demonstration in the street, with a group of maybe twenty people all dressed similarly in white. As the bus stopped and opened its doors, unable to pass, Lili followed her Big Brother outside, rather confused when she realized that the crowd was speaking German amongst themselves.

Well… sort of. They were speaking with an accent she hadn't heard before, and it sounded very similar to Mr. Poland's accent… but it was definitely German. That was the first sign that she should have noticed that read _"something's not right." _The other was her Big Brother's reaction.

She could feel Switzerland tense up as he saw the rally.  
_"Scheiße! Bleib in meiner Nähe." _**("Stay close to me.") **He practically commanded her, his grip on her hand doubling.

"Big Brother! You're hurting me!" She exclaimed- so as not to say complained- in German, which instantly drew several looks from the surroundings. This didn't bode any good.

_Hoppla… _**(Whoops…)**

* * *

Feliks got up and ran to the door, but he suddenly froze when he saw the scene outside.

Bosch Zwingli was standing there, gripping the hand of a terrified Lili among a group of some sort all dressed in some sort of a white uniform, arguing in loud German with a pair of strangers- apparently the rally leaders- wearing (also white) hoods, so he couldn't see who it was.

It was, of course, evident who had fired the gun, and that it had only been shot into the air… for now.

Of all the times for his stranger phobia to rear its head, this had to be the worst. He knew he had to go in and do something! There were hostile inter-Nation interactions going on, and it was HIS country! (He somehow intuitively knew that those persons were also Nations, but he had no idea who.)

One second, he was cool and composed, but as soon as he noticed what was going on, it was as if his legs were about to give out from under him. He wanted to throw up, faint, and bolt all at once, and the only thing keeping him from doing so was the all-consuming fear that that might draw the attention of the foreigners.

He took a deep, calming breath, which- despite what he had read in those tacky "deal-with-the-fear" books- did absolutely nothing to help his nerves, and managed to make his legs stop shaking long enough to take a single step outside.

He wished with all of his heart he could just hide behind Liet, who, despite being dependent on his protection, was one of the few people who knew about and put up with said phobia- but managed to tell himself that that wasn't an option.

"For Liet." He hissed through clenched teeth, trying to force himself to move. "For the Commonwealth, for alliances…"

Hah… Nope. It was always worth a shot. He couldn't… he just couldn't. It already took all he had not to collapse just thinking about it. No matter how much he hated himself for it. And how much Liet would have hated him for it.

It was silly. He couldn't hide from strangers forever.  
_Why not, though? _It seemed like a temptingly good idea at the moment.

_Estonia. Belarus. Ukraine… Katyusha._ What about them? Could he do it for a pair of near-total strangers… and the woman he had for many years considered his cousin?  
"For Kasia." He whispered weakly, and swallowed hard and closed his eyes, trying to muster the courage to do anything.  
No matter how hard he thought of the others, and how disappointed they would be, and how much this made him feel like a cowardly, sniveling fool…

The shouting grew louder and more urgent. Nobody had noticed him. Yet.

In what had to be the lowest point in his career as a Nation, he turned around and ran back inside, hiding his head in his hands and allowing himself to remain in that position- fingers in his ears and hands over his eyes- until everything stopped. Very abruptly, the arguing was silenced and it was as if nothing had happened.

As soon as everyone was gone, part of him wanted just to sag against the chair he had taken a seat on in relief. It was over. He hadn't had to actually do anything.

…But Switzerland and Liechtenstein were also gone, whatever that meant. There was quite obviously nobody in the entire parking lot. Had he had the nerve to go up and actually do something- heck, even _SAY_ something… could this entire situation have been averted?

_Yeah. Probably._

And now… he didn't just have Liet and Estonia on his conscience, he had Lili (and yes, Zwingli by extension… but he could take care of himself) to worry about.  
What was wrong with him? He hadn't had a panic attack like that for… ever since he had really gotten acquainted in the international arena. God, he had made a fool of himself then…

There was just something about these people that made him feel uneasy. Not a lot of people had that talent. But coupled with the fact that they were (most likely hostile) strangers… _Boże_, why couldn't he just go up and do something for once in his life?  
He very neatly mentally omitted all the times that he HAD stood up for himself and Liet. It seemed that every step he took, he was trying to make up for his cowardice toward strangers by being brash around people he knew.

And eventually… it had driven him to lash out at Toris, as well…

Feeling more than a little depressed, Feliks pondered what to do next. As much as he hated the idea, he'd have to go and tell Sawa and Ravis what had happened.

The biting cold didn't seem to bother him anymore as he zipped his coat closed and started walking over the trampled snow where the fight had been.

How could he have left it that way? Zwingli, protecting Lili, against twenty… thirty, _fifty_, the number kept rising in his mind. He had been too scared to properly register anything, and his panicked mind had multiplied the crowd to what felt like a hundred men.

So he had run and hid. Like Italy, to say the least.

What RIGHT did he have to run and hide? His "job" was to stand up to people for his friends… _friend_… who didn't have the gall or insolence.

He was supposed to be the "insolent boy" whom Russia and Prussia had partitioned… several times over. And had come back.

He was supposed to be a phoenix. Not a chicken.

Had he been looking for clues (no matter how Sherlock Holmes that sounded), he would never have noticed anything. But as it was, he wasn't really paying attention to anything but feeling ashamed and guilty, and so didn't watch where he was going.

That was how he suddenly found himself lying face-first in the snow, having slipped on a patch of ice.  
Could this day get any better? Yeah, it could. He landed on top of something hard and lumpy, about the size of his fist.

_"Ała…" _he groaned, rubbing his arm where it had landed on the offending object. It turned out to be just a rock. Nothing more. On top of it lay a scrap of material, most likely having torn off of the clothes of another person who had landed the exact same way.

Not really thinking what he was doing, he picked up the fabric- wincing when he moved his arm, that was going to leave a serious bruise- and fingered it without paying too much attention.  
Suddenly, it hit him: he knew exactly what it was. He had seen it ten thousand times or maybe more.

But he didn't think… he hadn't seen it in exactly 488 years… it couldn't be… not now… not a coincidence like this. He had to be mistaken. He refused to even allow the alternative.

He was holding part of a thick battle-cloak. White with a thin black line along the edge. One that only one Nation wore. And he was dead.


	8. Chapter 7

Prussia. Was. Dead. He had to be. Feliks refused to even allow himself to _think_ differently.

Now for a quick round of "Polish-Prussian Relations for Idiots" in sixty seconds (more or less, depending on your reading speed.)  
The two had shared a frienemy relationship pretty much since they were born. Prussia had raided Poland, Poland had kicked him out and given him a solid lesson, Prussia had refused to give up, Poland had had to give in and give him (a little) land but later once again ejected him unceremoniously when he got on his nerves. Repeat for… oh… some thousand years or so.  
But something happened after 1525. The Prussian Homage didn't sit well with either, and nerves were stretched to the breaking point as their personalities just didn't seem to want to fit with each other. On top of all that, Gilbert was very close with his younger brother Ludwig, who (for some odd and _completely_ mysterious reason) detested Feliks even before they had actually met. Once they stopped being strangers to each other, the feeling quickly became mutual to the point of the German pointedly ignoring the Pole whenever applicable.  
And so, Polish-Prussian relations turned from love-hate to basically hate-detest. These tensions culminated in the Partitions of Poland, during which Prussia was even able to overcome his hatred for Russia when they thrice split the Slavic nation- in 1772, 1793, and 1795. He had then grown in strength at the latter's expense (much to Lithuania's chagrin… but that is entirely another matter), however they didn't really see each other in that Feliks (making a distinction here between the Nation of Poland- which was "equally" split between the two and originally Austria- and Feliks Łukasiewicz the human) spent the majority of his time in Russia's household, the USSR.  
Not that the choice belonged to either of them… but Russia had insisted, and who was Prussia to argue? In the Pole's mind, he had probably orchestrated his stay the entire time.  
The next thing that Poland had heard of him was that he was dead. Early 1947, Prussia had been wiped off the map by Germany's boss. Had the horrors of World War Two not been fresh in his mind, Poland could almost have felt sorry for Ludwig, who was very broken up about the entire affair. Alas, each of them realized that what he had done to the older (though already physically younger) Nation in the years of the War was unforgivable. Besides. Poland was having trouble of his own, attempting to evade Soviet control and become his own country. (Oh, the cruel joke of fate that was July 22, 1952!), so it really was none of his business.  
And then there was the convenient fact that Germany had suddenly come up with the idea that the labor and death camps were Polish doing! Nope. Any spark of sympathy that Poland might have had for either brother at that moment was snuffed out even before it was lit.

Either way, Prussia was dead and Poland, sitting shivering inside of a freezing-cold #175 bus at the Central Railway Station-slash-Bus Depot, was holding relatively solid evidence that this was not so.  
He didn't know whether he felt more frustrated (_ugh! Of all people, it had to be Prussia he had had his first panic attack in over 500 years in front of_!), embarrassed, relieved in some odd way (_Prussia could be cruel and harbored a grudge, but he wasn't a psychopath-slash-sociopath like Russia or Germany_), or nervous (_though that last one he refused to admit)_.

He was seriously going to catch hypothermia. As mentioned before, the Pole was short and slight, not built for the wicked Polish winters. He should have been born in Miami for all the cold tolerance he had. The temperature had apparently dropped during his stay because the thermometer on the side of the bus read "-15°C." He could see the breath in front of his face as he huddled in his seat.

Finally- fifteen minutes past schedule- the engine started and the heating came on. It felt like a blessing to Feliks, who stretched out his hands toward the nearest heating vent. Of course, he couldn't even get close to reaching it.

_No tak. __**(Colloquial: **__**Figures**__**.)**_ Blasted low-floored public transportation. Even America would have had trouble reaching the vents on the ceiling, so he could pretty much forget it.

_Polak potrafi,_**(Polish inside joke)** he could hear Prussia's jeering taunt in his ears.

_Shut up. He_ imagined replying. It wasn't as satisfying as a heat vent, but imagining telling Prussia to shut up gave him an emotional outlet of sorts.  
_Wait… what?_

A steady stream of down-coat-clad citizens had already begun to file into the bus several minutes earlier, and after toying with the idea for a second he decided that standing on a seat would be worth neither the effort not the looks and Looks alike he would receive. Everybody's eyes on him was just not something he _did_ unless he knew said "everybody."

To take his mind off of his frigid surroundings, he pulled the piece of material out of his pocket again and decided to see what he could tell from it. It was definitely a piece of a Teutonic Knight's clothing. Their uniform was and will always be unmistakable with anything else.

If he wanted to track them down, where would he start?  
…That sentence hadn't come out right. If… say, _Estonia_ wanted to track down the Teutonic Knights… he would probably either hack their web-page or something and find their location.  
The world of programming was a mystery to the Pole, so for him to even Google the Teutonic Knights… or even _find Wikipedia_bordered on a miracle. And he certainly couldn't ask Estonia for help. Not Japan, either, he was too close with China- who was pretty much constantly stalked by Russia.

Who else was good at "computer stuff"? He could technically try to track down Tallinn- Estonia's capital- but neither the idea of having to track down somebody who was most likely a computer hacker nor having to confront him or her afterward appealed to him. And he could pretty much forget Tokyo, who _still_ resented their last meeting…

Wait a minute. How could he have not thought of this before? What about America? Alfred- though he wasn't perfect in many ways- understood technology like nobody else on the planet did. And his slightly (okay, _very_) weird alien friend could even out-hack Estonia (which he had, once. Liet had told Feliks the entire story afterward. The memory of the two of them laughing about the event tugged at his heart, but he pushed it from his mind.)

He quickly dialed the familiar number: _+1-972-057-942_

Nobody answered the call neither on the first ring nor on the fiftieth. Finally, there was a click on the other side of the line and not so much of an answer as a garbled shout:  
_"DUDE-WHAT-IS-THIS-IT-IS-EIGHT-AM-TOTALLY-NOT-COOL -BRO!"_

Alfred had obviously just awoken… and reacted in the only (in the Pole's mind) acceptable way to being woken up even before Carrefour- or, he supposed, Walmart in the American's case- opened for the day.  
Poland simply waited until the shouting died down and the speaker ended with a (now cheerful) "So 'sup, dude? Why're you callin'?

"Hey, Al!" He desperately tried to emulate the laid-back tone that usually came to him so naturally. Perhaps it was the cold, the shock, or the hurricane of other emotions that he was experiencing at the moment, but for the first time in… what had to be forever, his preferred course of action would have been simply to be serious and honest.  
"S'me, Feli. Like, I'm totes sorry I woke you up, but check it: d'you, like, think you could do me a mondo favor?" He bit his lip, hoping that the urgency in his voice wasn't too prominent.

"Sure!" Alfred, however, seemed turned-on by the very idea. "So what exactly is it that you need some hero expert work on, yo?"

"So have you, like, heard of what happened last night in Eastern Europe?"

"Yeah." If America had been bright and sunny before, his voice was flat and serious now. "You gotta be taking that pretty hard, huh?"

Feliks was honestly shocked by this reaction from the American. He had expected him to breeze over the entire situation like it was nothing… like he did 99% of the time, actually.  
"I… like…" He had no idea how to reply to that.

"Dude, if you need anything… ask, okay?"

"Thanks."

"Dude, I totally still owe you for _Kościuszko_ and his crew. Plus… I'm the hero!" That last part was more like the Alfred Feliks knew. Not even a two-ton weight could keep him down too long (if at all).

"Right, thanks, brah." He managed a small smile at this. Little did he or America know that this was exactly what he needed to hear at this moment. "Have you got a computer in front of you?"

"Dude! I just got up!" The voice on the other side of the line complained. "Gimme ten secs, lemme get my laptop up."

There was a commotion on the other side of the line and quite literally ten seconds later, America's voice came through again:  
"M'cool now, what'cha need?" It sounded like he was eating something that, knowing him, had to be a rather flattened hamburger which must have come from the pocket of his beloved aviator jacket at the same time as talking.

Feliks took a deep breath and told him about the demonstration (somehow managing to avoid mentioning giving in to his ridiculous- in his mind, at least- phobia) and the scrap of material.

_"Dude!_ Sounds like a serious trail!" As usual, America sounded disproportionately cheerful about a serious matter. "I can totally track them down from here. Wait a sec. Tony! _TO-NY! C_'mere and see this… No, use your own. I'm not kidding, leave mine alone."

The conversation devolved into a squabble and Feliks briefly wondered whether or not anyone remembered that he was on the line. It was almost his stop by now, so he was about to hang up when Alfred picked up the phone again.

"Dude… Tony took my netbook, totally _not_ cool. But on the upside, I think we got something. He says…" there was some high-pitched chirping on the other side of the line.  
"…he says that the Order of the Teutonic Knights still functions… but in secret… dude…"

America's voice was an awed whisper, which didn't happen often at all.  
"…They changed their name an' everything, but… it can't be… _dude!_ It's Belschmidt, for sure! Jesus, he was supposed to be dead! _Awesome!"_

"Are you sure…?" The Pole's voice was slightly strained.

"Who else signs the application form with 'Awesome Me' and 'Keep Being Awesome' in German?"

"…True."

"…And it says… German, German, German, 'pouleen', something… wait a minute! Tony says this says '_lost territory'_!"

Feliks didn't even find it necessary to ask _how_ the extraterrestrial knew German. "Hang on… read that word again, yeah?"

"What? Prooben? Hang on… _Preußen_?"

"No, the other one."

"Po… poultry… Pomona… pouleen! Eh… P-O-L-E-N. Dude! Tony says that's what he calls you!" An icy tendril seemed to wind its way around Feliks' chest. From the context…

It was at that ever so opportune moment that all hell decided to break loose.

* * *

**Please review! I did a cliffhanger on purpose… and will continue as soon as I reach… say, eight reviews. NOTE: If you review two different chapters, that's two reviews! (Hint, hint)**

**KEEP BEING AWESOME!**

**EDIT: Still pretty short, and still sort of sucks :/ Oh, well**


	9. Chapter 8

**I asked for four reviews. I received two. Half. Half, half is good. Especially since the ones I did get were so positive, they truly made my day!**

**And I know that this is an insane updating speed for me… ~cough~ but… yeah. Enjoy another two chappies!**

* * *

_"CO się stało?"_ **("WHAT happened?")** Halina repeated in disbelief, staring at the phone in her hand.

"W-well… Ms. Warsaw… ma'am…" The voice seemed very nervous as it repeated its previous lines from what Ravis could hear, sitting across the table from the woman holding the device.

Just a minute ago, he had been trying not to fall asleep over the large cup of mint-and-chamomile tea Miss Warsaw had brewed him, but now, the obvious fear in her voice had jolted him awake.

He was very curious to find out what exactly had happened, but unfortunately, despite the fact that he could hear her conversant's voice, it didn't help him any because whoever it was spoke almost hysterical Polish. And he knew better than to ask at a time like this, because despite the fact that she was a City, not a Nation, as a capital, she had all of Mr. Poland's authority behind her. And after his time in the USSR, Latvia knew better than to draw attention to himself if something bad happened, because when it did… there would have to be a scapegoat to place the blame on. More often than not, it was Toris, but he himself was also an easy target.  
So, despite his curiosity, he sat quietly and tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible.

Sawa, on the other hand, seemed to have her own problems as she hung up on the caller and made call after call, either barking orders or demanding information in rapid-fire Polish. With every call she made, however, the "bite" of her voice lessened and she looked more and more distraught.

She kept repeating one phrase in circles, whoever she called. And even though Ravis had no idea what it meant, it seemed to be almost a plea for reassurance.  
_"Na pewno?"_ **("For sure?"/"Are you sure?")**

She finally hung up for the last time. Her face showed an age it hadn't before- but then again, Ravis reasoned, despite the fact that she was physically in her early 20's, she must have been hundreds of years old. Her expression was drawn taut with worry.

Silently, she walked around the table to stand next to Ravis- who instinctively flinched as she neared him- and pressed him to her chest in a hug. He could feel her shaking, very slightly. It was then that he realized just how serious things were.

Finally, she whispered two words that even though the Latvian didn't understand, the message of which was very clear.  
_"Boże mój."_ She breathed, cradling Ravis' head in her arm. _"Boże mój."_

* * *

If Feliks hadn't been to hell and back, he'd have thought that this was it. It only took a heartbeat for a relatively normal bus ride to turn into a fiery inferno that seemed to swallow up the world.

The first warning sign was that the bus suddenly lurched to the side. He didn't think that much of it in the fraction of a second that he had before he realized that the bus had driven down a steep slope to stop literally a few meters from plunging into the Vistula River and had flipped onto its side.

It took several seconds for the hysteria to begin. Nobody had any idea what to do. They screamed and, despite the panicky driver's best efforts, proceeded to throw themselves against the emergency exit, all "little red hammers" forgotten in the mayhem.

And that was before the engine exploded.

Most of the people had managed to push their way out of smashed emergency exits and regular windows alike when tongues of flame rippled through the back section of the two-part bus.  
It may have been this very fact that the bus was two-parted which saved Feliks from certain death, because he was sitting in the front half and had those few precious moments more.

One of his arms was pinned under a seat at a painful angle. Nobody stopped to help him out, because everyone's first instinct was to clamor to save themselves and whoever was riding with them. Friends, family…  
He coughed violently as the smoke reached his lungs, trying to swallow his panic. The clean air was rapidly running out despite the open windows. _Nie, nie, nie!_

_Smoke. Fire. Weight. Pain. Dark. _He was losing the ability to form coherent thoughts.

_The snow. _The snow was his only chance. If he could just soak his shirt in the snow, he could breathe.  
_Air_. Air seemed like a nice idea. If only he could move those two meters that separated him from the nearest hole. Alas, that would require getting out from the prison that held his arm.  
_Air? Darkness. Smoke. Weight. Pain. Choking. Dry. Heat._

He had to get out… breathe… his head was spinning from the smoke that filled his beleaguered lungs as he strained against the contraption that was crushing him in place.  
_Heat. Red. Smoke. Breathe. Choking. Stop. Move. Pain._

Those seconds felt like they took hours on end, when he struggled for consciousness against the searing heat. After a while, the apathy of a drowning man seized him and he slumped against the wall, resigned. Resigned to die.  
_Fire. Smoke. Darkness. Smoke. Fiery, stinging, searing smoke._

It was only when his pant leg caught fire from a stray tongue of flame… which seemed to be coming nearer, but he couldn't be sure… did he suddenly jerk into consciousness, screaming and slamming the limb against the floor until the fire went out.  
_Hot! Numb. Pain. Burn. Movement. Lungs. Smoke. Air. No air. Choking. Coughing._

This didn't help the stability of the crumbling vehicle at all. The whole thing shifted a few inches, and Feliks somehow knew what would happen if it collapsed.  
Or if it fell into the river.

Was it a choice between death in the water or death in the flames? Had he retained the power of thought, that would have been the thing that would have floated to the front of his mind With a final effort that seared his lungs with agony, he pushed against the seat. To no avail.  
_Effort. Weight. Pain. Breathe. Pain. Fire. Heat. Breathe. Smoke. Weight. Pain._

Suddenly, the weight of the chair was lifted from him. He vaguely wondered what was going on, but his oxygen-deprived mind couldn't even do this properly so he simply lay there limply, once again buried in apathy.  
_Calm. Quiet. Finished. Smoke. Pressure gone. Dark. Far away. Sleep._

"You idiot! Move!" A heavily accented voice reached his ears, but not his brain. "I can't hold it! If you are conscious, _move!"_

_Conscious_. Was he conscious? He saw and heard everything from far away. It didn't concern him as much as the fact that he just wanted to rest…  
_More shouting. Sharp movement. Blur. Pain. A kick? A shove. Shock. A slap._

_"Obudź się!"_**("Wake up!") **The blurry figure in front of him slapped him, managing to get him awake. A little. The language he spoke loosely- very loosely- resembled some archaic version of Polish, which seemed familiar…  
_Spinning. Dizzy. Movement. Tugging. Smoke. Lungs. Air. Snow. Brightness._

_…Air! Snow? Brightness?_  
Feliks' back arched as he inhaled sharply, then turned around and retched into the snow. The smoke was still there. But he could breathe.

Finally, almost as an afterthought, he turned around to try to figure out what exactly had happened.  
The people from the bus had been evacuated. There were footprints everywhere, but nobody in sight. Perhaps the authorities had deemed it beyond saving. Or that it would fall into the river anyway. Or that there was nobody inside anymore. Because he didn't shout for help. Or anything.

_Who, _then, had saved him?

The Pole realized slowly that he was lying on his stomach in the snow. But the cold felt good against his heated skin. He attempted to get up on his hands and knees, the only thing he could do at the moment.

Nobody was visible. His head was fuzzy from the movement, and when his vision cleared, he realized it was because he was seeing white on white.  
The figure was dressed solely in white, with a white mask over his face to conceal his identity. He only managed to get a glimpse of his receding figure. Then he was gone, and Feliks was alone.

The sirens far above his head signaled that someone was there, on the top of the steep fall. But between him and them was the bus, which was now leaning in his direction dangerously, viable to collapse at any moment.

On his other side was the Vistula.

Wouldn't it be ironic if he drowned in the very river that his legendary savior, the Varsovian Mermaid Sawa, had sworn to appear out of in Poland's hour of greatest need?  
_And_, he thought, his mind going off on smoke-drunken tangents, _where was she during the wars? The Partitions? The bombings, concentration camps, and shootings of not-long bygone years?_  
Where was she when he made the biggest mistake of his life?

The rescuers seemed just to have noticed him. A bunch of shouting ensued, full of what were probably instructions but simply sounded like gibberish in his ringing ears.

It didn't seem like anyone was going down there to help him, which was good. At least, he was convinced it was good. So he ignored them.

All the while, the wreck teetered dangerously above him. But that didn't really feel like it mattered… did it?

A voice suddenly called out. Unlike the others, it rang out clear as a bell inside his brain. Why?  
"_FELIKS! _Let me GO! I'm going down there. I said, LET ME GO! _FELIKS!"_

It was Sawa's voice. But that was impossible, wasn't it? She was… at her flat… which couldn't be too far from the place she was now.

The sound of her voice finally seemed to snap him back to reality. It was as if he was suddenly looking at the situation through a completely different filter.  
It only took a few seconds for him to rise to his hands and knees again, then to his feet. It felt like his head had just been run over by a bus…  
And it _would be,_ if he couldn't get out of there!

He took a staggering step or two, then simply lunged to the side, praying that he would roll long enough to save his life. It was just in time, too. The structure groaned, leaned, then toppled. At the same time, there were footsteps running toward him. Sawa had broken free of whoever was restraining her and…

He didn't exactly know what happened afterwards, but the next thing he remembered was standing next to her, on top of the precipice… She was repeating one phrase in a circle while helping him stand.  
_"I thought you were dead, I thought you were dead…"_

An odd thought struck him: it was all vaguely embarrassing how easily she could pick him up or take his entire weight on her shoulders after yet another near-death experience.

He tried to say something, but devolved into a coughing fit. Finally, he managed: _"You can't, like, kill a phoenix."_

It was meant, of course, to sound reassuring, not full of himself. And he didn't think Sawa cared until he felt her slap him full in the face "Don't you _ever_ do that to me again, you idiot!"

"You say that like every time." He was beginning to recover full functionality of his senses.

Her only reply was a laconic: "Get in the car." But she didn't sound quite so furious that time.

It wasn't a long drive, but it was enough for him to recover and become fully aware. Even for a Nation, Poland healed shockingly fast. He had had to learn to do so in the past, and it was a mixed blessing during wartime.  
Yeah, it was nice, not remaining down and out for too long. But it also meant that more of his would-be captors were intent on killing him rather than simply successively weakening him, day by day until he couldn't go on.  
The burns running down his leg, however, would stick around for a few days at the very least.

"Just like old times, huh?" He noticed.

Sawa didn't react. Okay, so it was true that she was left to pick up the pieces whenever he came out worse in a fight (which was more often than one'd think, seeing as he would even pick a fight he couldn't win in the name of freedom or autonomy), but…  
"This is different." She replied hoarsely, and after a long pause, during which she pulled into a parking lot and stopped the vehicle, cleared her throat to continue:

"When you get beaten up by another Nation, I know you know better than to let them kill you. But you can't _'know better'_ in a natural disaster. When they phoned me to tell me you were missing, I assumed… without help…"

"Hey. I'm fine now. Don't, like, worry about me."

"I'm not worried!" She snapped, ending the conversation abruptly. This definitely WASN'T like old times, but Poland didn't dare point it out.  
"They called me in for a meeting earlier, you know." She continued more quietly. "Trying to find out how I let this happen. They threatened to take away my cityhood if I refused to show."

"_What?! _But it's, like, totally not your fault!"

"_They_ don't seem to think so." She said flatly, handing him a key. "You go to my flat, okay? I'll be back in a few hours." Her tone of voice made it clear that that probably meant "next morning."

"And who are 'they,' exactly?"

"Among others, your president, head of the Ministry of Defense…"

"Then I'll talk to them." He pushed the key back into her hands forcefully.

"They told me very specifically not to bring you. Something about you being half-if-not-dead and needing to recover. Sound familiar?" A small smile graced her lips.

"I'm totally fine." He huffed, crossing his arms.

"And Ravis?"

His eyes widened almost comically. "Y-you, like, left him alone?"

"What was I supposed to do?" She retorted defensively. "Let you die?"

"But… you left him _ALONE?!"_

"I didn't have any other options! He VOLUNTEERED!"

"You know what… I, like, can't be mad at you because you just saved my life…"  
Feliks surrendered- which was a rare event indeed- but his mind subconsciously ran worst-case scenarios. He was usually quite easily able to shut out these visions, but somehow, he wasn't able this time.  
Was _this_ how Liet felt whenever he did something incredibly rash and, let's be blunt, stupid?

He quickly said a rushed good-bye to Sawa, then ran upstairs.  
He wasn't quite able to get up four flights of stairs without breaking a sweat just yet (despite everything, he had just been through a near-death experience that he was trying to shut out of his mind along with the pessimistic scenarios).

He stopped about halfway through to lean against a wall and try to regain his breath. As soon as the pain in his side was gone, he continued up another two stories.

Do you remember those worst-case scenarios that Feliks was imagining earlier? All his greatest fears were confirmed when he opened the door to a dark and seemingly empty flat.


	10. Chapter 9

"Ravis…?" Poland called out, trying to keep his tone light. "Everything okay?"

Every second of silence and darkness made his heart beat harder as he quickly slammed the door shut and raced into the living room. There weren't a lot of places to hide in Halina's flat, which worried him even more. And there was no option that Ravis didn't hear his raised voice.

He checked the living room, bathroom, dining-slash-kitchen niche, and finally opened the door to her bedroom with a BANG.

"_RAVIS!_" He shouted again, searching the room visually for the boy's form. To no avail. This time, however, he got a reply. There was a slight noise, perhaps a muffled squeak of fear, from the closet.

Trying not to think about what he was doing, he slammed the closet door open. There, in fact, was Ravis, huddled in a tiny corner and hugging his knees to his chest. Feliks couldn't see his face in the dim nook, but he could hear the occasional muffled sob escape the child.

"…Ravis?" He asked more quietly, unsure of what was happening.

The boy's head snapped up, showcasing a tearstained expression of pure terror. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I don't know what I did but I'm sorry, please don't hurt me, I'm _sorry_…"

The words tumbled from his mouth, eventually turning into an incoherent mass of Russian, which the Pole sort-of understood, and what had to be Latvian, which he didn't, glued together in random, seemingly unrelated phrases.

"Ravis!" Feliks knelt down to try to reach the kid, but the latter shrunk back against the wall with a look so reminiscent of trapped game that he had to take a step backwards. He was frozen, flattened against the wall. The only part of him that was moving was his chest, which was rising and falling raggedly.

"Don't! _Please_, I'm _begging_ you, I didn't do it, I'm sorry…" His wide eyes were aimed directly at Poland and unfocused, as if he weren't looking at him but through him.

"Ravis, it's _me!_You're okay! He didn't know what was going on, but Ravis seemed to be trapped in a waking nightmare. Having no idea what to do, the older blonde reached out and grabbed the other's wrists, trying to get him to wake up. This just caused him to let out a little scream and attempt to wrest his tiny arms from the former's grip.

"I'll do anything! Don't, please don't, I didn't! _Nē! Nē, ludzū, nē…"_ **("No! ****No, please, no…")**

"Ravis, it's me! _Wake up!"_What was Feliks supposed to do in this sort of situation? He suddenly realized that it wasn't a nightmare… but a flashback. What could he do to stop this?

Ravis had stopped struggling and simply continued crying, shrieking incoherently, eyes fixed on his imaginary tormentor.

The only way he could end this was to somehow pull Ravis out of the vision. To make him realize that he wasn't Russia.

"Ravis… _to ja."_**("It's me.")**The only way that this could happen was if he did something Russia would never do. Russia didn't speak Polish.

_"Hej. W porządku? Nic ci się nie stanie. Pamiętasz co ci obiecałem?"_******_(_****"Hey. Okay? ****[You okay?] Nothing's going to happen to you. Remember what I promised you?")**

He was aware that Ravis didn't understand a word he was saying, but he kept his tone soft and welcoming. Just in case it was similar enough to Russian, however (it was a Slavic language, after all, and those were all similar enough that in some cases, they sounded like dialects of the same language), he spoke slowly and enunciated clearly. He prayed that the similarities wouldn't heighten the illusion, only weaken it.

"Remember what I promised you?" He repeated in English "You're safe as long as you're with me, yeah? So stop crying." Those words echoed in his memory. Not once now, but twice. And each time… Toris hated him. Did Ravis, too?

He pushed those thoughts from his mind violently.

Ravis had slumped against the wall and curled back up into the fetal position, where Feliks could still hear the occasional sniffles that signified he was, in fact, crying.

Feliks leaned in and grabbed the unresisting child in his arms, slowly, gently pulling him out of his hiding spot. Ravis instantly clung to the slightly singed material of his coat, sobbing into his chest. The Pole could feel him shivering uncontrollably.

"You're not…" He choked out weakly between sobs. "You're not… you're not _him."_

"No. It's me. Feliks. You're okay. Those days are gone now." Instinct's hand once again guiding him, he began to rock back and forth slowly, stroking the child's back comfortingly.

"You don't- you don't understand. I _SAW_ him! But it was you!" The younger boy redoubled his grip around Feliks' waist, seeming to beg for comfort. "I thought… I thought… you wanted to…"

"It's okay. You were dreaming. You know Russia can't hurt you anymore."

At the very mention of Russia's name, Latvia began to sob harder. Poland bit his tongue painfully. _Idiota!_

"He can't get you anymore. You know that. I'm here to protect you." Latvia mumbled something so quietly, the older boy didn't catch it at first.

"What?"

"You don't know… what it's _like_. I _can't_ be safe, I'm _never_ safe, _nobody's_ safe! You're big and powerful, so it can't have happened to you, so you don't understand…" Ravis practically shouted. Feliks didn't even flinch, looking at him thoughtfully. Had it been any other situation, he'd either have ignored the comment or laughed it off. But here, it struck a chord.

"Ravis. "

"I-I'm sorry! I didn't mean to! Really!" The boy had already begun to back out of his comment, once again in tears. "I'm sorry, please don't hate me…"

"Ravis!" He repeated, louder this time. It cut off the stream of apologetic babble at its source_. "I don't hate you!"_

"…You don't?" The already wide violet eyes, now red from crying, became almost perfect discs.

"No. But I want to ask you something about what you said." He waited for a tentative nod, then continued.

"Look at me. You said I was big. I'm one-sixty-five centimeters tall. My country is less than one fifty-fourth of Russia. You said I was powerful. My own capital could beat me up if she wanted. Heck, she _has._ The weapons count for my entire army is less than 1% of what American civilians buy in a year! So why did you say that?"

Ravis stammered something about being stupid and thoughtless and talking too much, laced with yet more _"I'm sorry's."_

"No." He once again cut short the kid's apologies. "No, you're not. You are brilliant, you are creative, and you have more empathy in you than I could ever hope to have. But you said that for a reason. And now I'm curious. What is your reason?"

"B-because… you don't… you're not _scared_ like us! So you have to be! You can't not be!"

"…What?"

"You've _never_ been scared! Toris told me about how before I was born, you captured _Moscow_ for some time. A-and you've never been scared of HIM! You stopped him from hurting me at a meeting, remember?"

_Honestly? No._ Feliks thought but didn't say. He didn't remember ever standing up for the child, even if it made him hate himself for not noticing how he was treated before. But perhaps Ravis did remember something he didn't. Or a detail that had seemed minor to him…

"I'm sorry to disillusion you… _I'm not._ And you know what? I'm scared to death. I can't go up and talk to anyone in the street because I'm obsessively anthropophobic. I'm terrified of having my rights taken away from me again, and the very thought of speaking publicly makes me want to throw up. But most of all, I can't stand to see things happen to people I care about. And that's what keeps me going. And that is what you need to do. Find something that drives you forward. Find something to fight for, and you'll never lose hope." He didn't even know why he'd told the Latvian all that. He hadn't mentioned it to anyone but Liet before.

"Toris always said that." Ravis' voice was somewhere between a whisper and a shout. He had begun to shake again. "That's why HE would hurt me. Because it hurt Toris to see me get hurt. And he couldn't do anything about it."

It took all the Pole had not to get up and kill Russia then and there. Instead, another incident floated to the top of his mind.  
_It was him and Liet, trapped under the Partitions. He remembered that he had been interrogated first. The Soviet nation had beaten him until he was pretty much unrecognizable. But he just kept grinning at Russia, knowing that it unnerved him. Because a grinning, cold Russia was one thing. He was powerful and knew it. But a grinning Poland, who had nothing left except for the clothes on his back, and those were in tatters, was diametrically different. And that was unnerving. He had even managed to answer Russia's ever-polite questions about how his dear neighbor had been these past years, how he had managed without his "help."  
But then had come Liet's turn. Liet himself was doing his best to emulate Feliks' grin and (like, totally) cheerful attitude. But he was in pain. And he was crying. Then, he was screaming. And Poland was banging on the glass, begging to be taken instead, shouting curse words in assorted languages when Prussia appeared to restrain him. And all the while, that awful, cruel laugh that he so despised…_

Before he knew it, Feliks was talking. He hadn't mentioned this to anyone. Not even Liet remembered this day. _All the better for him, too._ And he didn't know why Ravis was hearing this. It was one of those memories that you try to forget. To pretend it doesn't exist. To be able to live with yourself.

And that was what Feliks had been doing. Until that day. And somehow, nobody knew how this happened, he was also crying and Ravis was hugging him, and the roles seemed to have evened out… each comforted the other, Ravis snuggled up against Feliks, leaning against a wall.

He told Ravis everything, and all the boy did was listen. He told him how he had been part of the USSR as well; Russia had simply kept him as far from Liet as possible. He explained about his years as a satellite state. About the Partitions. The Uprisings quashed as if they were nothing.

Ravis told him about finally mustering the courage to declare independence. He added about how long it took to be recognized at all, and how quickly he fell back under Soviet occupation, then Nazi occupation, then back under Soviet occupation.

Feliks told him about what happened in Poland during WWII. About how 99% of the world thinks of it as "Polish death camps" simply because they were on Polish ground. About how nobody cared that the only reason that they were on Polish ground was to make it easier to massacre Poles by the millions.

Ravis told him that he had been wiped off the map entirely. That he had first been punished by Germany for allowing himself to remain under Soviet control for so long, then accused of pro-German tendencies when Russia took him back.

Feliks told him about the Polish-Lithuanian War.  
"I'm just a selfish idiot, that's all." The bitter note in his voice was aimed nowhere else but at himself. "After all I'd done to keep us from being annexed, I acted worse than Russia, Germany, or… anyone. I took his capital, and I held it for 20 years. Because it _'was rightfully mine.'_I thought that. Vilnius was supposed to be mine."

There was a long silence after that. Feliks had drawn away from Ravis, crossing his arms over his chest defensively.

"You probably don't want me to help you anymore, do you?" His voice cracked slightly. "Because I wouldn't. I'd hate me if I were you."

After yet another silence, during which Feliks had, for the first time in years, allowed himself to wonder _'what if.'_What if he had become powerful, not Russia? Would he be anything but a sadistic monster himself? What if it had been him that the Baltic states answered to? After all, how was he any better than-

He was startled by Ravis putting his tiny arms around him tentatively.

"I could never hate you." The little Nation's face showed something of an adult that scared even Feliks, while at the same time managing to remain childishly loyal. "And I'm sure Toris never could, either. Everyone makes mistakes. That doesn't make you an awful person."

"Yeah… but my 'mistake' almost cost my best friend's life." Poland couldn't stay depressed for long in these conditions, and even he had to give a small smile when Latvia squeezed him tightly.

"But you're saving it now… right?" Knowing purple eyes that were far too old for the round face they were trapped in were fixed on his own, narrow green ones.

"Yeah… yeah, like, I guess so…" The man gave a small laugh, returning the embrace. Ravis' logic was fairly sound.

"Thanks, Ravis."

"Thank you, Mr.… Feliks." Latvia rested his head on the elder's arm. "Nobody's ever talked to me like that. Like I'm an adult, too, and it_ matters_ what I have to say."

"Yeah? I've always thought it mattered what you had to say. I never get taken seriously either… I suppose we have that in common." Feliks smiled at the boy, who, for the first time, looked truly at peace and as if he was falling asleep on his arm. It suddenly came to Poland just how exhausted he was. Not to mention his throbbing burns, which he probably should have dunked in ice water the second he got home.

"You know, I, like, got a bit of a lead today."

Ravis' eyes flew open excitedly. "Really? Do you know who…?"

"Not yet. But I have a trail pointing quite definitely in the right direction. I got America to, like, help me out on it. He's a wizard with computers."

Suddenly, he gasped. _"Alfred!"_ He had never called Alfred back after their call was ended so abruptly. His own cell phone had most likely been incinerated in the fire He jumped up to look for a phone (Sawa didn't have a stationary, she just didn't need it).

But as he turned to leave, Ravis clung to his arm.  
_"No! Don't leave me here! Please don't leave me alone! I can't stay here alone!"_He shrieked.

Feliks was very surprised by this turn of events. He had been sure that only seconds ago, he'd been half-asleep, but now…  
"Hey, I'm not, like, leaving, am I, yeah? I'm just going to look for a phone because I… hmm, _lost_ mine." It was best, he decided, to keep the exploding bus story to himself for the moment.

Ravis shook his head, tears streaming from his eyes. "No, please don't go, _please don't go…"_

"Hey. Okay, I won't go anywhere. Don't worry." He sat back down on the floor, Ravis following suit. He was crying again, but it was more hiccupping than sobbing. Poland placed a hand around the boy's shoulders, once again pulling him against himself.

"I just… I just can't stand… being alone…" Ravis choked out. "Because… Because when I'm alone, I see _HIM_ everywhere. It's like he's here with me, wanting to hurt me if I'm alone. I know it's silly."

"Everyone's scared of something." Feliks gave him a small squeeze. "Don't worry about it, I'm not going to leave you alone."

"…Promise?"

_"Promise."_Once Ravis had calmed down some, he added with a half-smile: "Can we move to the couch, at least?"

In reply, he got a sleepy _"Mmmm…"_

Taking that as an affirmative, Feliks gently picked up the drowsy child, carrying him to the living-room couch, which could double as a guest-bed if necessary. He somehow managed to get it unfolded with his foot, then laid Ravis on it gently. Before he had time to react to his temporary absence, the Pole lay down next to him. He was having trouble keeping his own eyes open…

He retained a fuzzy memory of Ravis curling up against him, then he was dreaming…

* * *

**Okay, guys, for real this time. I'm not going to set a strict limit on how many reviews I want before I update. But I want at least two, okay? Because… you know… I don't want to update if nobody's reading.**

**EDIT: I left this one pretty much unchanged :) I actually like this one, sort of.**


	11. Chapter 10

**Hey! I'm sorry, I'm late, this chapter is huge, single for a change, and probably riddled with errors, and I'm on zero hours of sleep. There. I can't write any more before I fall asleep except to dedicate this to the one and only Tanglepelt, who gave me the idea with shattering a glass. Well, being me, I took an idea and danced with it... but never mind. Enjoy!**

* * *

_"You're late."_

"I'm sorry, sir." Halina Wagarowicz gave a small bow. "It couldn't be avoided. I was making sure he was all right."

"Looking at your surname, you can't be surprised that we doubted you."** (Wagarowicz: lit. "Truant")**

"But, sit." The second voice was harsh and deep, with a note of dark humor in its cadence, while the first was higher and painfully serious. Neither was remotely friendly. Even though the speakers' faces were hidden in the shadows of the dark room, Warsaw knew that it was the two most important people in the country.

Halina obediently took a seat in the indicated chair. She noticed that the seat next to it was occupied by her older cousin, Cracow, or Ola, a petite woman with long, straight honey-blonde hair that would have reached her thighs had it not been tied down in a pair of thick braids. To Ola's right sat Gniezno. Lech, as the eldest of the three, was the only one of them who reached the height of one-eighty centimeters and had brown hair that normally resembled a rat's… pardon, an eagle's nest. Today, however, it was combed down and hidden under a folk-costume cap.

With a jolt, Sawa remembered that she was supposed to wear a ceremonial folk dress known as the _Łowiczanka_ Costume to official meetings such as this one. Ola was wearing the Cracovian Costume, and Lech the one that was associated with Greater Poland. What linked all of them was, for the girls, a wide and brightly colored skirt (Ola's being flowy and red and with large flower designs, while Sawa's being made of thick felt and having multicolored stripes in shades of green and orange), an embroidered (or, in Sawa's case, plain) vest over a light shirt with wide sleeves that narrowed at the ends, and either a wreath of flowers (Ola) or a white headscarf (Sawa) on their head. In addition to this, Ola also wore two strings of red beads. All in all, Sawa's gave the impression of being more down to earth while retaining the folk charm, while Ola's seemed more suited for dancing and very much lighthearted altogether.  
Lech's costume was much simpler; Wide, brightly colored pants that narrowed at the ankles and a light, linen shirt, coupled with a hat that couldn't be compared with any other sort of hat. It loosely resembled a stiff beret with a peacock feather stuck into it at a jaunty angle.

Halina was about to apologize for being out of costume but Ola shot her a meaningful look: _Don't interrupt and don't draw attention to yourself_. Her serious attitude formed a stark contrast to the way she would normally take everything as it came, without her cousins' more conservative approach to life.

Warsaw could feel his disapproval as she frantically tried to make her business suit look a little tidier after what she'd just been doing in it.

"We are very disappointed in your conduct." The first voice continued. "We expected better from you, as a representative of our proud capital."

"I'm sorry." She apologized again, feeling a warm blush rise up her cheeks. "I should have managed to be on time after all. I know."

"I am speaking of your conduct at the scene of the accident."

Sawa winced. She probably should have expected as much.

"We have told you a thousand times; that is no way for a Representative to conduct herself. You must be impassive, no matter what the circumstances."

"B-but… sir, he might have _died!_ He's a representative as well!"

The figure scowled. "Though I'm still trying to figure out how _that_ happened. The person who chose that incompetent fool…"

"But," the second voice interrupted, "he has _one _advantage. He is easy to make a puppet out of. Without him realizing it."

Halina made an outraged sound at the back of her throat, but knew better than to voice her disapproval of their opinion of Feliks.  
One term stuck to her mind.  
"You're… making puppets out of us?" She protested.

"No, of course not." The second voice dismissed her. "_You're_ here, aren't you? We instructed you not to bring him for a reason."

"Now, we invited you three here for a reason. The reason is such: we have to inform you, Warsaw, that he have been expecting this attack for a long time. By '_we_,' I mean us and the two… former capitals." His disdain for the latter was obvious when he spoke.

Halina tried to mask her disgust at his referring to her family in such a way. But this was nothing new. What was much more shocking to her was that she had been left out of the 'loop' in this case. Even though she was the youngest of the three and so had been left out plenty of times before… be that as it may, she was the capital, for the love of God! And the attack was aimed at _her_ city!

"You _KNEW_?" Her voice rose a few levels.

"I'm sorry." Ola grabbed her younger relative's hand. "We had all known that the Order was planning an attack on Warsaw."

"…!" Halina snatched her palm out of her grip. "And you didn't tell me! You didn't do _anything_ to stop it! You didn't even CARE!"

"_Warszawa_… Sawa, please. Please try to understand. We had no choice." Cracow turned her head away in shame, her long lashes glistening with tears.

"Don't CALL me that!"

_"Sawa, dość."_ **("Enough.")** A quiet and warm, yet somehow firm voice reached her ears. Lech had risen to stand between the girls and the shadows protectively. Despite the fact that he normally wasn't allowed to spend a lot of time with his family due to being obligated to run his city, he and Ola were very close. Before the destruction of Warsaw, Halina had been equally close to the other two cities, but she had walled herself off from them afterward.

_"Nie! Not enough! You can't… nie możesz! Nie! Jak mogłeś!"_ **("No! […] …you can't! No! How could you!")  
**Despite being a grown woman, physically around twenty-one and actually… about nine hundred, Sawa lunged at him, trying to shove him aside, trying to get at the puppet masters hiding behind. However, Lech easily caught her and restrained her while she sobbed into his chest. It was like when she was a child again. Like back when Feliks had dragged Ola, capital at the time, into a battle that she didn't want to fight. And when she had come out all the worse in it… but alive. It was that same kind of shock, relief, happiness, but also blind, helpless fury.

"She's right. Had the attack been interrupted or expected, they would have known that we knew. And that would bring serious repercussions to us and all our people."

"Then what GOOD does knowing do if we don't DO anything with that knowledge?"

Lech fell silent, unsure of what to say. Finally, he managed: "It… _it wasn't our decision._" He said this almost silently, in an archaic dialect of Polish that he knew the girls would understand but doubted anyone else would.

"We had no _choice_." Ola repeated quietly. It once again struck Sawa how far she was from the flighty, flirty, carefree girl that she would usually be. "Sawa… _Przepraszam_. I'm sorry. We're all sorry. But we couldn't do anything. Not without risking the lives of our people… and yours, too."

"How… _touching_." The second voice, the one who had made fun of Halina's surname earlier, quipped. "I almost can't bear to interrupt this family moment."

"We haven't gathered here to renew torn family ties, if you don't mind. You are cities, and are expected to conduct yourselves as such." The first voice lacked the spark of schadenfreude humor, instead sounding high and cold as ice.

"Here is our final word. Halina Wagarowicz, you have one more chance. You had a single 'get out of jail' card, and you just played it. Do not disappoint us again."

* * *

Feliks didn't sleep soundly that night. For the first time since breaking free of Communist influence (read: attempted Russian domination), he was plagued by nightmares. Visions of him, and Germany, sometimes Liet, and Russia, and Ravis, too; tangled, disjointed images, memories and fictional, drifted in and out against a twisted landscape of fear and pain. They were visions that could only come to the mind of either a soldier or a victim of war. Or, most often, a mixture of both.

Several times he woke up in the middle of the night, gasping as if he had just surfaced from the bottom of a river. Each time, he noted that Ravis wasn't faring any better, clutching at him for dear life, for protection, for comfort. Another victim. Or perhaps a soldier? In his half-asleep state, it was hard to tell the difference.

Each time that he woke up, it took him several minutes to get his bearings. Every time, he remembered where and when he was. Safe. _War is over (if you want it)._ Wasn't that how that went? The war was over. Everyone wanted it. Everyone was safe. It was just a memory, one that had to fade. Would it ever fade?

Each time, he ended up gently rocking Ravis until he stopped shaking and uncurled a bit, just a bit. But the next time time he woke up, the boy would always be clutching at him again like before. He felt a surprising pang of jealousy. He had never had anyone stronger defend him. He had always been on his own.  
But then, he supposed, so was Ravis.

It was only when he surfaced from a particularly vivid flashback of Auschwitz that he eventually realized something wasn't right. No, something was missing. The pressure he had so quickly learned to expect was missing from his chest.

_Ravis_. Where was Ravis? The small Latvian was nowhere to be seen.

The adrenaline that was still coursing through his veins made him jump up, instantly on full alert. He vaguely, as if from far away, registered that his half-healed leg was still throbbing, but his mind was focused on the situation at hand, somehow shutting out the pain. Adrenaline can do that to a person.

"Ravis?" His voice, still hoarse from sleep, was full of concern but also rang out sharply.

There was a sudden noise from the direction of the kitchen. It sounded as if somebody had mistaken a trash compactor for a dishwasher and filled it with glass.  
Heart pounding, Poland jumped up. His mind flashed through all the possibilities, real life mingling with wartime instincts. Number one_ (bomb!)_, someone had broken into Sawa's flat. Plausible. Maybe. It was on the top floor of a five-story block,_ (shooting! Siege!)_ but these things did happen once in a while. Not to him personally_ (invasion?)_- which was slightly hard to believe, given his affinity for extraordinary incidents- but weirder things had happened to him before_ (attack!)_.  
Number two hadn't even had a chance to form by the time that he saw what had happened.

On one hand, nobody had broken and entered. And the war memories were dismissed as if wiped away. No longer relevant. Each if those was a relief. But on the other… Sawa was going to kill him.

Ravis was laying splayed on the floor, frozen in an expression of horror. It looked like the entire dish cabinet had come down with him. The only thing that hadn't been smashed into dust was a single glass, which he held in both hands like a treasure.

Unsure of what to do, Feliks tried to think of something to say; he found himself utterly at a loss for words. (This, though it usually happened once in a blue moon, seemed to be becoming more and more common recently…). Finally, he opted for muttering increasingly offensive phrases (in several languages, some of which he didn't even know from what language the originated) about whoever had built this kitschy cabinet in the first place and kneeling to help the kid up from where he had fallen.

In his string of obscenities, Feliks had used quite a few Russian phrases which he had picked up when they were thrown his way… one time or another. He hadn't stopped to think that Ravis might have understood them… or- more specifically- misunderstood; misunderstood because he apparently believed that he was referring to him.

Before the taller blonde realized what was happening, he had scrambled back to avoid his hand, tears streaking his face.

"I'm-I'm sorry." He sobbed, flinching at Feliks' next attempt to help him up. "It w-was an accident… I didn't mean- I didn't mean to."

It was only then that Poland realized his mistake. Once again, he had managed to break any ties of friendship they might have made in one fell swoop.  
"No… Ravis… I'm not mad…" _Not at you, at least…_

With that, he attempted to grab Ravis' hand, but he didn't seem to even hear him. He was pleading _"don't," "please,"_ and _"no"_ in a random mixture of Russian, Latvian, and English until it all devolved into a homogeneous mass of incoherent cries for mercy.

_"I'm-sorry-I'm-stupid-I'm-useless-I-can't-do-anyth ing-right-I'll-walk-on-them-if-you-want-or-pick-th em-up-or-even-eat-them-please-just-don't-hurt-anyo ne-for-this-I-didn't-mean-to-please-I'll-do-anythi ng…"  
_The monologue went on and on, during which he offered Feliks the single unbroken glass like a prize, or an offering._  
_

The very sight made Feliks want to throw up. Okay, so he had collapsed a dish cabinet. Okay, so it sort of was a big deal. Okay, he himself had aggravated the situation on accident. But the boy's reaction didn't fit the situation at all.  
But what hit him the hardest were his words._ 'I'm stupid, I'm useless, I can't do anything right.'_ Was this what Russia had conditioned him to think like? And what about right after? He had offered to walk on it… or eat it, just so that he wouldn't_ 'get hurt'_? So this didn't even qualify as being properly hurt?  
What levels of hell had this ten-year-old boy been through?

He grabbed the glass and set it on the counter carelessly, kneeling to Ravis' level again and grabbing both hands, forcing his attention toward him. He stiffened, standing stock straight and shivering- but not resisting, no, never that.

"Ravis." His voice was kind but firm when he finally spoke. _"I promise I'm not going to hurt you."_

"Y-y-you're not?" This seemed to stop Ravis cold. He stood, frozen, for several seconds. And for a second, behind the tears in his eyes, there lit a small spark of such pure and untainted joy that it made the Pole's heart swell. Finally… he'd done something right. But the joy was soon extinguished by a shadow of disbelief that seemed to age him fifty years. He wasn't a boy anymore, he was an old man who had been fooled in this way enough times to know what was coming next. And the memories of it haunted his eyes.

In all honesty, Feliks was scared to death by this sudden change. Not a lot of things did, but at that moment, Ravis terrified him.

"You're just saying that. You want to see me hurt, don't you? It's _fun_. And it's _more_ fun if I don't expect it. I know how that goes. So go ahead, do what you want. I don't care. But I'm not going to give you the satisfaction of playing your game." The venom in his voice was so apparent, for the first time, Feliks felt very insulted. And when Ravis then spat at him, he lost control and smacked the boy in the face, hard.

In all fairness to Feliks, who could blame him? But then again… who could blame Ravis for having trust issues And he immediately felt guilty when the latter once again dissolved into hysterical sobs. But that guilt was consumed in righteous anger, which seemed to radiate from his body, making him seem to cut a formidable figure despite his height- or lack thereof.

"I'm sor-ry, I'm sorry, that was out of line…" He once again looked trapped, wide eyes staring straight at Feliks. But somehow, the Pole knew that he wasn't seeing Russia but himself. After all, what else did he deserve?  
"Please don't hurt me! I didn't mean it, I didn't want to, I couldn't, I'm sorry, please…"

"If you don't believe that I won't hurt you, then why do you keep asking?" He was shouting, trying to elicit an angry response from Ravis instead of his usual, fearful one.  
"I have told you that I will not hurt you HOW many times? What can I do to make you believe me?"

Surprisingly, it seemed to work. Despite Feliks' fury, it felt like a small miracle when the child responded in kind, his small hands clenched into fists:  
"How am I supposed to know I can trust you? I've _never_ been able to trust _anybody_ in my life! Toris kept leaving for Mr. America's once in a while, and it always meant _I_ would get it for it! And Eduard can't protect me from him! And they'd always promise me that they'll never leave me, _oh, no,_ I'll be with them my entire life. _Some life it is!"_

"And what have I ever done to betray your trust?" Feliks was beginning to slow down some, but Ravis looked like he was finally getting things off his chest after so many years.

"Nothing! _Nothing!"_ He was growing slightly red in the face from shouting.  
"Because you've never done anything to earn it! You promised me I would be safe! Well, it's a little late for that, isn't it! All you've proved to me this entire time is how badly you've treated Toris when you were friends! And that's supposed to make me trust you? You can't _do_ that to me! You can't _make_ me decide! I don't decide, _I get told what to do_! That's what my whole _life_ consists of! Being told what to do! And you're trying to make me decide, where both options are equally…" he finished that sentence in Russian. Feliks himself hadn't known that exact expression, but something inside told him it wasn't one that Ravis should have been operating with. As a matter of fact, he doubted that the kid fully understood the implications of what he had just said.

Something about the absurdity of the situation made Poland want to laugh, and he couldn't hold back a spasm of laughter as he bit his lip frantically. It wasn't condescending laughter at Latvia's futile anger as the younger Nation had probably expected, but simply honestly having found the situation humorous.

"It isn't… it isn't funny! Why aren't you angry?" Ravis looked both frustrated and taken aback.

"Because I have absolutely no reason to be angry. Look at us. This entire situation is, like, totally ridiculous. You just insulted your entire… well, family, and me to boot. What over? A little broken china?"

"But… I just broke every dish in the house. _Aren't you mad at me?_" He seemed to be unable to wrap his mind around that simple fact: that something that he'd evidently done wrong wouldn't be held against him.

"'Course not, why would I be mad? Truth be told, they weren't, like, even my dishes. Plus, they were totally hideous. You did both of us a huge favor."

"And you're not mad about how I insulted you?"

Okay, those had sort of stung- okay, each word had pretty much felt like a physical punch in the stomach- but Feliks meant it when he said:  
"Oh, hell, no. You just lost control. Happens to everyone once in a while. I had a row with a French ATM machine last week, you know? It _totally_ started it. It refused to, like, translate the transaction into Polish. Or English, for that matter. Not a hundred kilos out of Warsaw, to boot. Well, I call it a row. It sort of, like, sat there and I shouted abuse."

Well… he meant the first part. Feliks' whimsical act seemed to have some effect on Ravis, because he managed a shy half-smile.

"So, hey. Don't worry about it. These things happen to everyone once in a while." Feliks ruffled Ravis' hair, and pulled him down on the floor to sit next to him (a reasonable distance from all the glass, of course).

"They happen to me a _lot_, you know. I have a _lot_ more accidents than normal people. That's why I can't be trusted with anything big, because I'll screw it up for _sure_." Ravis was tugging at his sleeve nervously, obviously wondering whether or not he could and should reveal this to the man next to him.

"Hey, don't say that." The older blonde gently chided. "You, like, want accident-prone? Try trusting a pair of your best agents with a Chinese lantern and six bottles of rocket fuel."

"What?"

"I saw it in a movie somewhere." Feliks shrugged. "I thought that it might be funny. Don't get it myself, though. Alfred- America- he's tried to explain it to me before but I, like, totally don't understand American jokes."

"That was supposed to be funny…?" Ravis asked wistfully. It was obvious that he hadn't heard many jokes in his life.

"You know what? I'm fairly sure it was, but I can't be 100% sure. Anyway, that's totally beside the point. Look at you! You're growing up, what, like, eleven, and you feel like you're inferior because you can't do the same level of manual labor that Liet and Estonia, who are, like, adults, can? Something smells fishy here."

"B-but… I've never done anything right! I'm not as clever as Eduard and I'm not as brave as Toris and I'm not as strong as you. I can't work hard like Katyusha and Natalya scares me to death. That means I'm good for nothing. The only reason I still exist is that my life is somehow linked to my people's lives."

"Ravis, _stop_." Poland's voice was deathly serious. "I don't care who or what told you otherwise, you can't say you're nobody because you're not somebody else."

"But I can't do anything right. I can't. I bungle up even the smallest job…" He seemed not even to be talking but repeating preprogrammed phrases with sincere conviction that drove him to tears once again. Feliks' mind flashed back to a few minutes earlier._ 'I'm stupid, I'm useless, I can't do anything right.'_

"I've already told you not to say that! It's propaganda and lies, whichever term you prefer. I very much like this particular one: _bullshit_. You're spouting Soviet _bullshit_, is what it is. Stop."

Ravis nodded miserably, wiping his face with the back of his hand awkwardly. "I'm sorry."

"Stop apologizing! Don't apologize for who you are. Take pride in it instead, you're totally your own intelligent, creative, sweet person and you need to accept it. Don't let anyone change who you are."

"You say that because you _are_ somebody."

"And so are you! Can't you see? You're a fully functioning country that is actually in a better situation, money-wise, than Russia." Feliks crossed his fingers and prayed that this was actually true. He knew for a fact- with a measure of schadenfreude satisfaction- that Russia was headed for major financial trouble very soon.

"But… you don't know… you don't know what it's like. I can't be somebody. I'm whoever HE wants me to be, and I can't be anyone else, so I'm nobody. You can't know what's that like…"

The Pole allowed an ironic smile to cross his lips. Of all people, of all the countries in the world, he was by far the worst possible person to say that to.  
"You can tell yourself that. Or you can tell whoever it is to go and stuff themselves for all they can do." **(Polish colloq. eq. to "go fly a kite")**

"It's not that easy…"

"Hell, yeah, it's not easy. But that doesn't mean that you should forget you're not a plaything but a person of your own. That's the quickest way to becoming nobody. But something tells me you're not quite there yet."

Seemingly for no reason, all of a sudden, Ravis reached forward to hug the older man and bury his face in the singed jacket he had yet to remove. As surprised as Feliks was, he couldn't help but smile a little bit.  
"What was that for, then?"

"Nobody… nobody's ever said anything that nice to me before." Ravis sounded on the verge of tears once more.

"I do that, once in a while." He returned the hug, then pushed the boy away briefly to look him in the eyes.

"Don't you dare ever let anyone tell you you're nobody again, do you understand?" A nod. "I want you to promise me, all right? No matter what happens, you'll remember who you are."

"And who am I…?"

"Whoever you want to be."

"I can be strong, too?" Latvia blurted out, eyes shining.

"Mark my words: if you want it to, someday, Latvia will control 50% of Europe. I can only express my hope that you expand to the east, and leave us poor Western Nations alone. Except for France. I'd like to see him get invaded for real for a change."

The idea, however, didn't seem to appeal to Ravis, who shook his head. He didn't seem to catch the casual joke in his tone when he answered:  
"I don't want to become a monster."

He sppeared to be looking at Feliks rebukingly, which, all in all, made for a slightly odd situation.

"Hey. Controlling a lot of land doesn't make you a monster. Look at Canada, or America. Or even who Liet and I used to be, for that matter. Commanders of Eastern Europe, stretching from the Baltic Sea up top to the Mediterranean down below. And look who we are now." He gave a small, cynical laugh that was very uncharacteristic of him.

"Sorry, bad example. That was mean of me. What I'm trying to say here is-"

"Anyone can be a hero?" Ravis finished quietly.

_Well, not exactly_. "That works." He nodded, turning the words over in his mind. They only begged the ending: _'Even you, Feliks.'_

"Hey, you know what? Go back to bed, I'll pick up this glass and I'll, like, join you in a minute." More than anything, for the first time in what had to be years, all the Pole wanted was some time alone to think.

Ravis didn't move, and it was only after a delay that he answered: "I should be the one cleaning it up. It was my fault."

"Never mind, I'm probably, like, legally responsible for you at this point. Go back to bed." The older of the two shrugged, a wry smile gracing his lips. The thought had just occurred to him.

Ravis seemed to be fighting with himself for a few seconds, before nodding and getting up, stiff-legged. Feliks could see the tremors wracking his entire body. It was only then that he was reminded of the former's nyctophobia… fear of the dark. Or was it autophobia, the fear of being alone and isolated? Either one seemed to work as his mind flashed to that psychology lesson, long ago.

_As for why Poland had taken that particular lesson, dear readers, even I, the omniscient narrator, am unable to say. Some things just evade human logic. Perhaps he was bored. Perhaps he was coaxed into it, perhaps by Sawa or Liet. Or perhaps, and this one is up to you to believe or pass off as a conspiracy theory, I had recently read up on phobias and wanted to weave it into the story somehow. Either way, let's move on, shall we? This direct way of revealing myself is quite discomfiting, both to me and likely you as well.  
__Anyway…__  
_

Either one seemed to work as his mind flashed to that psychology lesson, long ago.

"Ravis… you know… if you want, I could go back with you and I could clean it all up in the morning, okay?"

"…_No_." The effort that it took to say this was obviously enormous. "I caused enough trouble tonight."

"So what, you're going to make up for it by willingly giving yourself a heart attack?" The Pole jumped up, leg screaming in protest. It took all the acting skills he had not to acknowledge the pain with a grimace or a curse. He didn't even want to look at the angry, inflamed red tissue he knew he'd be faced with. It took even more effort to walk over without limping.

"…Was _that_ a joke?" Ravis looked slightly confused, but hope and gratitude hid behind his shaky mask, and with a jolt, Feliks realized that he wasn't the only one hiding things. The young Latvian also seemed to be trying to look like someone else (though he was not as adept at maintaining it).

"Sort of. I think it was." He shrugged indifferently. "Like I'm saying, you don't actually have to try to make up for anything, you know."

"But I screwed up." The boy clutched at the front of his (borrowed) shirt.

"I thought that I told you you didn't." Poland crossed his arms in a mock-obstinate manner, sizing him up. After a moment's hesitation, he added:  
"Don't, like, argue with me, not today. I'm totally exhausted, and I'm going to bed. Come on, then, or stay up if you want to. S'your choice."

Just to prove his point, he sat down on the sofa-bed and pretended to fall asleep. It wasn't ten seconds before he was joined by a small person, hesitantly relaxing next to him.

After a long time, he heard a quiet voice: "_Ar labu nakti, Feliks._ It means goodnight in my language."

_"Dobranoc, Ravis."_

* * *

**I shall eternally love the first person to catch both references in these chapters. Both cross-fandom, and many, many fandoms apart. More importantly, they get a one-shot of their choice. Good luck to you all. And more importantly, in whichever language you prefer:  
GOODNIGH...zzz...**


End file.
